Earlier this year I attended a crisis simulation day put on by my University. I hadn’t studied the topic at all before, so I didn’t know what to expect the morning of the event. The day involved us being drip fed information and developments surrounding a fictional crisis, to which we had to co-ordinate and manage a response.
The day started with a talk by a crisis management professional. It introduced the topic to me in an interesting way, full of real-life relation and examples. After this talk, I was excited to find out what the rest of the day would include. We were then divided up into groups smaller groups and sent off to separate rooms inside one of the University buildings.
After 20 minutes we were given our first bit of information – a student at ‘Telson University’ had tested positive for Covid-19. We were then tasked with deciding what to do with this information – do we tell our publics? Do we lockdown to University? It was quite overwhelming, but we were all excited to get to work. Further developments to the story were given to us hourly. Throughout the day as a group we created videos, press releases and interact with stakeholders and publics. At times, we would all disagree on the best way to communicate the developments, and even if we should publicise developments.
Finally, at the end of the day we had to consolidate our learning and present our actions back to the rest of the cohort. Personally, I found watching other presentations one of the most interesting and rewarding elements of the day. The most important thing that I learnt was to be transparent, honest and believable when dealing with crisis management. I hope that you found this blog post interesting.