Incident teams may want some feedback on their performance as a team and compare themselves with industry best practices. They may also want to conduct a series of exercises over time and have their performance assessed to demonstrate continuous improvement. PlanB Consulting has developed an Incident Team Performance Assessment methodology developed from best practices across a number of industries, including the military and emergency services, as well as research papers on Crisis Management.
The initial assessment is conducted during exercise one. The team is re-assessed during exercise two on their incident management skills, communication and reputation management, use of plans and procedures and recovery management. The two performances are compared to identify growth and also identify further gaps and development. The same process will be followed during exercise three. The team will also self assesses the plan contents and their own teamwork.
Each category is broken down into a number of individual elements and then scored out of five. In the Post-Exercise Report, the scores in each category are given, plus there is an assessment by the umpire on the team’s strengths and areas of improvement. The industry average is given and teams can compare themselves against the industry average. By using the assessment in future exercises the team can demonstrate continuous improvement.
Figure 1
Figure 1 is an example of an inexperienced Incident Management Team on their first exercise. The orange area shows their score against a ‘web’ of possible scores. The more fully the web is covered by the orange area, the better the team have performed.
Here, the incident team scored highest in ‘Recovery management’ and ‘Use of the plans and procedures’. They scored lowest in the area of ‘Communications and reputation management’. This area would be highlighted in the report as requiring further training and development. Over further exercises, the development of the team can be monitored and improvement should be shown as more ‘web’ is covered by the coloured area. An experienced Incident Management Team would expect to cover most of the web, scoring highly in every area.
Figure 2
Figure 2 is an example of results from a team’s self-assessment, which is undertaken at the end of the exercise as part of a ‘hot debrief’. The team score themselves against a range of criteria and the results show which areas they strongly agree or disagree with. Perceived performance can be compared with observations and is a good indicator of the level of confidence within the team.
Communications and Reputation Management:
Figure 3 shows the scores of the team against the criteria in the ‘Communications and reputation management’ area. As this particular team had low scores in this area, further analysis can be done to help target future training. Here, it shows that initial identification of interested parties and requirements was lacking, which probably impacted on the rest of the area’s scores. This is identified as an area in which further development is required.
There are two ways an assessment can be conducted
- PlanB Consulting develops and runs the exercise conducting the assessment.
- Your organisation runs the exercise and we provide a consultant whose role is to conduct the assessment.
Whatever way the exercise is run a full report is conducted after the assessment.
The price of the assessment is available on request.