Crisis handling
Our step by step guidline on how we handled the crisis
In Panteion University we have a class, a lab actually, called Crisis Lab and it is done under Betty Tsakarestou and Mrs. Mania guidance. For the end of the semester, we’ve been told to do a crisis simulation, so they gave us an assignment, in which we had to prove that we can deal with a crisis in a “hands-on” experience. Our team was a catering company and had one significant job: through this simulation we had to act as fast as we could when we realised a crisis was near. Below you will read our steps and thoughts in order to manage the crisis.
Alma is a multinational food company which cooperate with large restaurants all over the world. It’s the second top catering company in Greece.
THE CRISIS
What happened & company info:
Monday 9th January, 1st DAY
Ø 10:00 am: we were informed that the head of EKT Thomas Vandermild is sick with nausea along with some other stomach disorders.
First moves:
1. Research on what has happened.
10:00–12:00 am, communication with people in order to both find out what has happened and also to see whether or not there is any chance to believe that we are responsible.
Tuesday 10th January, 2nd DAY
Our moves:
7:30 am Despite the fact that we communicated with the necessary people we decided that it would be better to have a group of specialists have precautinary checks into the fields that a problem could be found.
9:00 am Precaution
Create a public speech in case needed. We wanted to make sure that we were prepared to answer questions even before the results were finalized so we created a press release based on the research and the contacts we made.
Ø 12:00 am: we were informed that there is a second incident
Our moves:
1. 12.00 -02.30 pm Having made the appropriate checks some hours before the second outbrake and knowing that we are propably not responsible for the sickness we contacted with:
· patient’s doctor
· patient himself
· rest members of the meeting
These contacts where made in order to get a handle of the situation and let them know we are doing all the research to find out what has caused it.
2. Then we released the Official Alma press release we had ready.
3. Response letter to Ministry
We also needed to contact the ministry because they had raised some questions about whether or not we are responsible of the poisoning and so we wanted to make sure that they knew we are making all the right moves to find out what has happened.
Wednesday 11th January, 3rd DAY
Ø 10:00 am: we were informed by the manager of hotel’s restaurant, that after a lot of checks and examination no pathogenic microorganisms were found in any of the food we provided.
- We had a press release to let everyone know the results of the check we had and at the same time letting them know that now that we have the full image we will be able to answer any question.
2. Restoring Balance
We also had an other press release to let people know why we handled media in that way and what we will be doing now to restore balance.
We also have available all the questions answered to all the media
