Crisis management

Covid-19
Xceed

Paperwork created by:

- Mohamed Massoud Mohamed
- Eslam Mostafa Soliman
- Mohamed Mostafa Selim
- Mahmoud Khamis Mahmoud
- Hossam Mahmoud Fahmy
 Table of Contents

●Topic + Team members ----------------------------- Page (1)

●Table of Content -------------------------------------- Page (2)
●Topic introduction ----------------------------------- Page (3)
●Theoretical Part ------------------------------------ Page (3-9)
●Company Introduction ---------------------------- Page (10)
●Practical Part ------------------------------------ Page (11-14)
●Advantages and dis-advantages ---------------- Page (15)
●Development recommendations --------------- Page (16)
●References used ------------------------------------ Page (17)
 Introduction

- This paper is meant to discuss the role of crisis management during the Covid-19 phase
in Xceed Egypt and the actions that was already planned and how they were
implemented, developed, and maintained and how they affected the business behavior
for all Xceed entities even after the Quarantine was over, Crisis management is a critical
organizational function. Failure can result in serious harm to
stakeholders, losses for an organization, or end its very existence. Public relations
practitioners are an integral part of crisis management teams. So, a set of best practices
and lessons gleaned from our knowledge of crisis management would be a very useful
resource for those in public relations. Volumes have been written about crisis
management by both practitioners and researchers from many different disciplines
making it a challenge to synthesize what we know about crisis management and public
relations’ place in that knowledge base. The best place to start this effort is by defining
critical concepts.

1-Theoretical Part:

● What Is a Crisis Management Model?

- A crisis management model is the conceptual framework for all aspects of preparing for,
preventing, coping with, and recovering from a crisis. By viewing events through a
model, crisis managers gain context and can better apply best practices.
- A crisis is an unpredictable or low-probability event that can cause significant negative
effects to a business. Often, the causes, consequences, and solutions to a crisis are
unclear, yet stakeholders must act quickly.
- This definition incorporates the ideas of crisis management researchers such as
Christine Pearson and Judith Clair, who in 1998 developed one of the first
comprehensive crisis.
 - definitions in “Reframing Crisis Management.” In 2007, W. Timothy Coombs put
forward another widely cited definition of "crisis" that emphasizes the importance of
stakeholders perceiving the unpredicted event as a threat.
Many models have been developed as part of a larger effort to build overall organizational
capacity and skill to anticipate, avoid, and mitigate crises. Therefore, most models emphasize
the importance of taking initiative, rather than being reactive.
This spectrum of skillfulness in crisis management can be broadly described as a crisis
management maturity model that ranges from reactive to proactive — or even pre-emptive
action. To learn tips on becoming more proactive in your strategy, read “How to Craft a Strong
Crisis Management Strategy.”

● Proactive vs. Reactive Crisis Management Model: -

The different approaches along a crisis management maturity model, from most to
least advanced, are as follows:
- Pre-emptive Crisis Management: This approach seeks to prevent or resolve a crisis at its
earliest sign.
- Proactive Crisis Management: In this approach, organizations take initiative early in the
crisis and seek to shape how events unfold.
- Responsive Crisis Management: This occurs when there is little warning of a crisis.
However, thoughtful, and quick analysis can lead to effective action that accounts for
long and short-term results.
- Reactive Crisis Management: This is often a panic-driven or knee-jerk reaction. Emotions
like fear play a leading role, and objective thinking is largely absent from the crisis
response. The company faces crises defensively and, following the crisis, the business
may experience problems, high turnover of senior leaders, or even business failure.
A similar model by Can Alpaslan and colleagues focuses on stakeholder involvement and views
the crisis management maturity continuum as follows:
Proactive Crisis Management: All stakeholders that could potentially be harmed should
participate in crisis preparation. In the response phase, the organization anticipates knock-on
effects and voluntarily discloses the most negative information before the media discovers it.
Accommodative Crisis Management: The organization accepts that a crisis is possible and
involves a broad set of stakeholders in preparation. In a crisis, the company accepts
responsibility, voluntarily meets the needs of the victims, and tells the truth.
Defensive Crisis Management: The business prepares only for crises with high expected costs
and involves stakeholders only if required by law. During a crisis, the organization resists
admitting full responsibility, but does admit some. The company only does what is mandated by
law.
Reactive Crisis Management: The organization denies the possibility of a crisis and any negative
consequences. In a crisis, the company denies all responsibility, closes off communications, and
hides the truth. Its stance is uncooperative.
- Scenario-Based vs Capacity-Based Model: -
Until the mid-20th century, organizations primarily faced crises that they had seen before
(though of course they were still challenging). The most common threats included natural
disasters and labor problems, so companies typically planned for these and other familiar
scenarios.
However, the increasing pace of business, advancements in technology, and increasing
globalization forced companies to more frequently confront novel and unpredicted crises, such
as workplace violence or global pandemics. In this newer context, scenario-based planning
holds limited value, since this kind of preparation hinges on facing a known hazard, which
triggers a set series of actions.
Organizations fare better by developing their capacities to handle any kind of crisis, even ones
that are completely new. Companies can still detail response plans for common kinds of
calamities, like fires, but compared to the scenario-based model, a capacity-based model
emphasizes building capacities like communications, financial backup plans, and readiness for
remote work.
Modular crisis management plans work well in the capacity-based model. Modular plans break
down responses into component actions that managers combine and match to the specific
demands of the crisis. You can find details on modular planning by reading “Step-by-Step Guide
to Writing a Crisis Management Plan.” See “Free Crisis Management Templates” to download
templates for management plans, helpful checklists, and tabletop exercises.
Fink’s Model of a Crisis and Other Lifecycle Crisis Management Models
In his influential 1986 book Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable, Steven Fink laid out
a four-stage crisis model consisting of the prodromal, acute, chronic, and resolution stages.
The prodromal stage covers the period between first signs and crisis eruption. During this
period, Fink states that crisis managers should be proactively monitoring, seeking to identify
signs of a brewing crisis, and trying to prevent it or limit its scope.
The acute stage begins when a trigger unleashes the crisis event. This phase entails activation
of crisis managers and their plans.
The chronic stage encompasses the lasting effects of the crisis, such as after a flood or a
hurricane when teams repair damage to buildings and roads. Finally, the resolution stage
represents the end of the crisis and a time for internalizing what went wrong through a root-
cause analysis and implementing changes to ensure there is no repetition.
Finks Crisis Model
Fink’s model, along with other top crisis management models (including a four-stage model
developed by Alfonso Gonzalez-Herrero and Cornelius Pratt in 1996), liken the unfolding of a
crisis to a lifecycle with multiple sequential stages. Gonzalez-Herrero and Pratt’s models see the
stages as birth, growth, maturity, and decline, and they define a crisis management model that
parallels these stages as including issues management, planning-prevention, crisis, and post-
crisis. Their model focuses on the communication aspects of crisis management, and the
researchers described issues management as a highly proactive phase in which the organization
searches for and anticipates issues that may become problematic.
Brand and communications consultant Alan Hilburg explains the crisis lifecycle as an arc that
consists of avoidance, mitigation, and recovery.
This concept is similar to another popular model with three stages: before, during, and after a
crisis. According to Coombs, the most important models are this three-stage framework, Fink’s,
and a third by Ian Mitroff, a researcher who is often considered the founder of modern crisis
management study.
 Most Influential Crisis Management Theories
Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, a crisis management theory is distinct
from a crisis management model, as models seek to represent the structure or application of
crisis management, while theories are more abstract concepts.
Some of the most well-known crisis management theories include attribution theory,
situational crisis communication theory, stakeholder theory, and contingency theory. Theories
from management studies and other disciplines have also been applied in crisis management,
including the diffusion of innovation theory, resilience theory, and human capital theory.

Attribution Theory and Situational Crisis Communication Theory

Attribution theory holds that companies suffer reputation and business harm when the public
blames them for a crisis. Situational crisis communications theory builds on this idea by
recommending that businesses tailor crisis communications to the crisis’ potential to hurt the
company’s reputation.
People closely associate Coombs with both these theories: Attribution theory starts from the
premise that it is human nature to seek to explain why events occur, especially sudden and
damaging incidents like crises. Typically, people attribute responsibility to an entity, such as a
company, or a situation. When people blame an organization, they direct negative emotions
toward it. Coombs found that this can result in damage to the organization’s reputation,
reduced intention to do business with the company, and increased tendency to speak
negatively to other people about the organization.
While Coombs didn’t anticipate the power of social media to amplify reputational harm, tweets
and other posts can be an especially damaging form of the negative word-of-mouth he
described. These networks have introduced a level of rapid two-way communication between
consumers and companies that previously did not exist, testing the ability of companies to
control the messaging. Therefore, social media management is an essential part of crisis
management.
In situational crisis communications theory, Coombs said crisis managers must first determine
the threat to the company’s reputation by assessing which of three clusters the crisis fits into:
the victim cluster (the organization is a victim); the accidental cluster (the organization
unintentionally caused the crisis); or the intentional cluster (the organization intentionally acted
wrongly). The clusters have escalating potential to harm the company’s reputation because of
the level of responsibility attributed to the company (minimal, low, or strong).
Based on an assessment of the situation and reputation risk, Coombs believes the organization
should respond with one of three strategies: deny, diminish, or rebuild. In deny strategies, the
organization assumes no responsibility; diminishing strategies seek to downplay the seriousness
of the crisis; and rebuilding responses tend to involve apologizing.
Secondary responses are referred to as bolstering, and include reminding (for example, drawing
attention to the company’s past good deeds); ingratiating (praising stakeholders); and
victimizing (pointing out the organization’s status as a victim, too).

Image Restoration or Repair Theory

Image repair theory, also known as image restoration theory, shares a focus on rebuilding an
organization’s reputation when it has been damaged by a crisis.
Communications scholar William Benoit originated image restoration theory in his 1995 book
Accounts, Excuses, and Apologies: A Theory of Image Restoration Strategies, which focuses on
the messages a company should communicate during a crisis. He offers five categories of image
repair strategies: denial, evasion of responsibility, reducing perceived offensiveness of the
action (such as with compensation), corrective action, and mortification (confessing and
begging forgiveness).

Structural Functional Theory in Crisis Management

Structural functionalism comes from sociology and looks at society as a structure made up of
institutions that function together to keep the whole running, like organs that work together to
keep the body functioning.
In crisis management, this theory explains how organizational communication relies on a
structure made up of networks for information to flow and a hierarchy of people who manage
the process.

Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect in Crisis Management

Chaos theory comes from mathematics and holds that some systems are so complex that small
differences in starting conditions can make them act very differently and unpredictably.
This characteristic inspired the concept of the butterfly effect, in which a butterfly flapping its
wings in Brazil can theoretically cause a tornado in Texas. This potential (for small changes to
have unpredicted effects) can make these systems appear completely random, even when they
may not be.
Researchers have applied both chaos theory and the butterfly effect in crisis management. For
example, they studied officials who made precise and rosy predictions about disasters without
taking unpredictable weather variables into account. This occurred in Canadian floods in 1997,
wherein inaccurate communication meant that many communities were not prepared for the
scale of a disaster that occurred.
In the corporate world, chaos theory can show the limitations of controlling volatile public
perception of a crisis.

Stakeholder Theory of Crisis Management

In 2009, Alpaslan, Mitroff, and Sandy Green published a theory that focused on the role of
stakeholders in crisis management. They argued for including stakeholders in crisis preparations
and responses — not because of their power or influence on financial value, but due to factors
such as potential for injury.
Crises can reorder the importance of a stakeholder group, and managers who understand
stakeholder theory consider and incorporate the needs and values of a range of stakeholders,
Alpaslan, Mitroff, and Green said.

Resilience Theory and Business Continuity Planning

Resilience theory, which has its roots in child psychology, holds that having one or more
protective factors can help individuals survive adversity with less harm. In business, resilience
theory helped give rise to business continuity planning, which seeks to make companies more
resistant to failure.
A business continuity plan is similar to a crisis management plan in that it anticipates
emergencies and disruptions that could occur and defines actions to regain normalcy in the
company. Read “Business Continuity Planning: How to Do It Well,” to learn more about that
process.
According to researcher Patrice Buzzanell, resilience theory outlines five elements that
businesses can cultivate to strengthen their ability to bounce back: crafting normality, affirming
identity anchors, making use of communication networks, putting alternative logic to work, and
emphasizing positive feelings while downplaying negative ones.
Integrated risk management is another resilience-boosting business practice. In integrated risk
management, company culture is attuned to risk, and organizations seek to evaluate the risks in
all their activities jointly, rather than in isolation. Technology-enabled practices support this
integration, and the result is better risk-reduction decisions for the whole enterprise.
2-Company Introduction (XCEED):

- Xceed, Egypt’s leading business process outsourcing (BPO) and shared services
company, in 2001 Xceed was founded to help clients around the world meet the
requirements of the rapidly evolving global market.
- Driven by great passion towards growth, Xceed adopts the latest technologies,
accentuates an immaculate customer experience and promotes sustainable
development in order to provide comprehensive and optimized onshore/offshore
customer management solutions.
- Xceed eyes expansion as a goal and a vision, as it connects four continents in eight
languages through ten sites in Egypt, Morocco and Mauritius.
- Xceed is fully owned by Telecom Egypt and has an overall operating capacity of more
than 10’000 Omni - channel workstations, Delivering high-quality services across
numerous industries, such as telecoms, fast food, technology, tourism, automotive,
financial services, fast-moving consumer goods and healthcare. The company serves a
number of different industries and has continuous support from the Ministry of
Communication. Its growing network of onshore and offshore corporate clients include
key government accounts and a growing network of top industry clients.
- Capitalizing on the groundbreaking success in the contact center area, Xceed extended
the services to include “Human resources outsourcing”, “Finance &Accounting
outsourcing” and “BPO consultancy.”
- Xceed, the first certified contact center company in Egypt and the MENA region, was
built on a culture of excellence, therefore, our state-of-the-art infrastructure and
contact centers ensure secure, reliable and scalable customer experience solutions. Our
technology and business models provide the perfect balance between cost-effectiveness
and market competitiveness. Our latest IT solutions offer the best set-up and
maintenance systems, call center hosting, data centers and much more.
- Xceed helps clients adapt to the evolving market demands through upgrading staff
capabilities and skills and boosting their internal development. Our multidisciplinary
teams tailor and implement new-age training programs that tackle development on
individual, department and enterprise levels. We help sustain an internal awareness
that works in alignment with your growth objectives.
3-Practical Part (How Xceed applied the crisis
management during the Covid-19):

Definition/Introduction
- SWOT Analysis (short for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) is a business
strategy tool to assess how an organization compares to its competition. The strategy is
historically credited to Albert Humphrey in the 1960s, but this attribution remains
debatable. There is no universally accepted creator. Also known as the SWOT Matrix, it
has achieved recognition as useful in differentiating and establishing a niche within the
broader market. Beyond the business world, SWOT Analysis can also be applied to the
individual-level to assess a person's situation versus their competition further. There are
both internal and external considerations build into the tool. "Strengths" and
"weaknesses" are internally related. The former representing a facet of an
organization/entity which lends it an advantage over the competition. The latter being
characteristic of that same entity, which leads to a relative disadvantage against the
competition. Regarding externally related, "opportunities" are realities in the greater
environment that can be exploited to benefit the entity. While on the other
hand, "threats" are realities in the greater environment, which might lead to problems
for the entity.
- The concept of strategic fit, a ubiquitous objective sought by all organizations, can be
explained as to how well the internally-related factors fit with the externally-related
factors.

Issues of Concern
While the SWOT analysis is widely known to facilitate the formation of organizational or
personal strategy by assessing internal and external elements, it also has its criticisms. Some
critics feel that the tool proves to be too superficial and formulaic, consequently hindering
performance as outputs might be misunderstood or misused. This latter point is especially
pertinent when SWOT analysis is attempted without real critical reflection by a collective group.
Having only a few individuals perform the assessment increases the risk of misrepresentation of
the SWOT inputs, leading to erroneous outputs. Also, organizations can anchor on one facet of
the analysis, losing sight of the other critical elements of the matrix. Lastly, the SWOT captures
the internal and external aspects of a single time-point. In reality, the environment is rapidly
evolving.
 - External Environment (PESTDEL):
- Political Environment
- Economic Environment
- Social Environment
- Legal Environment
- Socio-culture
- Supplier
- Competitors
- Customer
- Labor Market

- Strengths:
Internal characteristics of the business that give it an advantage over others in the
industry, such as:
-What advantages does your organization have?
-What do you do better than anyone else?
-What unique or lowest-cost resources can you draw upon that others can't?
-What do people in your market see as your strengths?
-What factors mean that you "get the sale"?
-What is your organization's Unique Proposition (U P)?

- Weaknesses:
Internal characteristics that place the firm at a disadvantage relative to others, such as:
-What could you improve?
-What should you avoid?
-What are people in your market likely to see as weaknesses?
-What factors lose you sales?
- Opportunities:
external chances to make greater sales or profits in the environment, such as:
- What good opportunities can you spot?
- What interesting trends are you aware of?
Useful opportunities can come from such things as:
- Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and narrow scale.
- Changes in government policy related to your field.
- Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes, and so on.
- Local events.

- Threats:
external elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business, such as:
- What obstacles do you face?
- What are your competitors doing?
- Are quality standards or specifications for your job, products or services changing?
- Is changing technology threatening your position?
- Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems?
- Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your business?
 Strength Opportunities

⮚ Focus on customer and employee satisfaction. ⮚ Increase usage rate of

internet and online
⮚ Career Path and employee’s developments
applications.
⮚ Strategic plans reflect corporate priorities.
⮚ New product & service
⮚ Annual objectives were established, committed
⮚ New Markets
and deployed to all levels.
⮚ Government support
⮚ Strong Company image in the telecommunication
market ⮚ Technological development
⮚ Management skills and performance ⮚ End-users respond to new
ideas.
⮚ Operation review meetings conduced monthly.
⮚ Reward and recognition system on place

Weaknesses Threats

⮚ High Rate of attrition ⮚ Quarantine situation

⮚ High dependence on third parties ⮚ Rarity of required languages
speakers
⮚ High training cost
⮚ New low-cost competitors
⮚ Increased number of unexperienced undergrads
hiring ⮚ Local supplier performance
⮚ Poor employee market
⮚ Economic crises
4-Advantages Vs. Disadvantages:
- Advantages:

 Awareness: Raise employees’ awareness about the pandemic such as explanatory video
(played on TV screens continuously across floors & break area), Informative banners
inside our premises, informative labels and sending daily precautionary measures for
COVID 19 E-mails.
 Work remotely: we delivered PCs and Laptops to every employee to be able to work
remotely to reduce employee’s manpower physically inside the organization.
 Precautionary procedures: business resilience department announced for the whole
company that in case of any need to work from site we have to stick to Precautionary
instructions assertively such as wearing face masks during their working
hours ,decreasing numbers of the employees inside the elevator, increasing the hygiene
inside the company , Keep distance between the employees in the workspace and inside
the whole company and incase of any violation disciplinary action taken by personnel
department and deductions applied on their monthly salaries.
 Secure Delivery: Company Assets (PCs) to Employee's Home: Conducted deal with
specialized vendor to PCs to employee’s home to guarantee Safe delivery for company
assets (PCs) and reducing physical communication between the employees.
 COVID 19 daily reports: business resilience department sent daily report with
employee’s details who suspected covid 19 to all concerned partis such as security team
to prevent them to enter our premises and personnel team to consider them 2 weeks
paid sick leave after company’s doctor approval.
 Enhanced Security Procedures: The rise of remote work has brought along a surge of
concerns regarding data security. In response, the company have stepped up their game
by implementing strong security procedures to ensure the protection of sensitive
customer information. They have introduced measures such as encrypted
communication channels, multi-factor authentication, and secure VPN connections.
These precautions are put in place to provide an extra layer of security and peace of
mind for both the call center and the customers they serve.
 Business Meetings become online as possible to avoid physical communication through
Microsoft teams or zoom.
 Virtual training invented and reviewed by training team to be able to contain the
pandemic crisis.
 Work from home leads to decreased number of employees on premises, so we save
some sites cost (Rent, electricity, sanitizing, etc.…).
 - Disadvantages:

 some of employees didn’t follow the instructions which lead to apply penalty deduction
from their salary which cause employee dissatisfaction.
 We face some challenges to collect company assets from resigned employees, some PCs
had corrupted monitor or CPU which led to asset damage and more cost to bring
alternative.
 Electricity cut out and internet connection instability decreased the employee’s
adherence and productivity.
 Work from home effected badly on Employees quality of performance due to less
physical interaction between middle management and their employees.
 Operation management complaints that virtual training trainees not efficient as training
on premises.
 We directed to deliver MIFI or additional internet bundle to avoid landline internet
instability which cause more cost.

5-Development recommendations (corrective Actions):

 Sending weekly awareness emails to all employees to avoid any salary deductions.
 Assets insurance with private insurance company to try to decrease loss of not received
assets from resigned employees or corrupted devices with active employees.
 Deal with vendor to warranty assets (PCs, laptops) to maintain corrupted devices (cost
reduction).
 Develop training plan to be more interactive with trainees to guarantee that trainees
focus (open cam, more games and quiz).
 Any employee who had lost time from his working hours due to electricity cut out or
internet instability must cover the lost time.
 Plan to save lost time if any problem occurs constantly to direct the employee to work
from premises with all precaution’s measures.
 Managers should schedule regular check-ins with their remote employees to ensure
that they are on track and to provide feedback.

6-References used: -
1- The Essential Guide to Crisis Management
2- www.Smartsheet.com
3- www.xceedcc.com
4- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-6486.00071
5- https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/17554251011064837/full/html
6- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/swot.asp