Printing company's "crisis management"

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“Crisis management? Are you kidding? We are a printing company! Any crisis needs to be dealt with and managed?”

If you ask a printing business owner what to do about crisis management in his company, you are likely to be questioning the previous question.

Are the facts as they say that printing companies do not need crisis management? The answer is exactly the opposite: Absolutely needed! And there should be a complete set of crisis management procedures. Let us start with the general relationship between crisis management and business.

Crisis management plays a decisive role in the development of the enterprise, just like brand management, strategic consulting, and corporate image, which are now being talked about a lot. In recent years, international political and economic crises have frequently emerged, such as the Asian financial crisis, the September 11th incident, the Iraq war, and the SARS that engulfed China and Southeast Asia last year. These have aroused the attention of governments of all countries. Crisis public relations have also changed. Become a social hot spot, but also by the company's general concern. From a broader perspective, many companies’ understanding of public relations begins with crisis management. Establishing a good corporate image and building a good corporate brand can all improve the company's own competitiveness and survivability. However, these measures are far from reaching the destructive power of the company's sudden crisis.

2 Where did the crisis come from?

In fact, the crisis is very close to the company, Microsoft President Bill. Gates once said: "Microsoft is always only 18 months away from bankruptcy." When companies embrace the future with endless hope, the crisis of the company is at any time. These crises may cause fatal harm to the company, or it may be that the timing does not arrive and it does not show obvious hazards. However, we should realize that the degree of awareness of the crisis often determines the correctness of our response speed and decision-making when the crisis comes.

Here is a breakdown of the types of crisis a business may face:

1) Personnel crisis

The personnel crisis is an internal crisis of the company. Once it is resolved well, it often turns into an external crisis. For now, the personnel crisis is mainly from the leadership and middle and high levels. When people closely associate the image of the company’s leaders with the corporate image, changes in the top leaders of the company are likely to cause serious crisis for the company. The loss of middle-level and high-level professional managers is bound to inflict pain on the company, and even hurt the vitality of the company.

2) Product crisis

The product crisis is the most fundamental crisis for companies (especially for manufacturing companies). Once problems arise in the design or quality of products, many aspects of society will cause problems for companies, and companies will become public targets. Under such circumstances, The attitude of enterprises in responding to crisis plays an important role, and for consumers as vulnerable groups, enterprises must show sympathy and concern to the injured party. And take necessary measures to reduce the losses of the injured party.

3) Public opinion crisis

Companies sometimes have to face some negative public opinions, such as some negative news of malicious speculation, irresponsible rumors and slander.

4) Social responsibility crisis

"Corporate citizenship" is becoming a hot vocabulary. The reason is that society has more and more requirements for enterprises. It also pays more and more attention to corporate social responsibility and attaches importance to the company as a social responsibility body to the surrounding environment and social groups. Responsibilities and obligations. As society’s concern for companies increases, the crisis of social responsibility comes into being.

5) Financial crisis

Fake accounting and tax evasion almost become public secrets in many companies. From a legal perspective, financial crisis is extremely important to the company. Once the financial scandal is exposed, corporate image will be greatly reduced.
Obviously, companies may face more than the aforementioned five types of crisis, and other such as policy crisis, malignant competitive crisis, public crisis, etc., due to space limitations this article is not exhaustive, but there is one point to make clear that: in the increasingly In a complex market environment and social environment, the crisis posed by companies is everywhere. When companies are happy for their rapid development, they must not ignore the vigilance of potential crises.

So, what should we do in the face of crisis? See below:

● crisis warning

Since there are so many crises, it is obviously necessary to establish a good crisis warning system in order to minimize the possibility of a crisis and its possible losses. In fact, the best crisis management is to stop the crisis before it erupts.

● Resolve the crisis

Although we made great efforts to prevent the crisis, it finally came. How to do? Of course, we must resolve it, and we must resolve the crisis in the most efficient and effective way.

In general, when a crisis occurs, first it is necessary to make accurate judgments, determine how much the crisis is, how much manpower and material resources need to be invested, and then form a response organization as soon as possible. The internal and external experts will analyze the crisis situation and take it together. Countermeasures, forming a consistent external caliber, actively and effectively resolve the crisis. After the crisis has passed, it is necessary to summarize and analyze the detailed process of crisis management and further identify problems.

3 The crisis faced by printing companies

This paper divides the crisis that printing companies may encounter into the following four major categories:

1) Personnel crisis

The personnel crisis can almost be said to be a crisis that any company may encounter. The collective defection of senior management personnel and the technical turnover will both adversely affect the enterprise and the degree will be light and heavy. At a crucial moment, an experienced person can The departure of skilled printers may make it impossible for you to deliver on time for customers, which in turn affects corporate image.

Early warning measures: In order to effectively prevent the outflow of outstanding talents, it is necessary to establish appropriate organizational structures and mechanisms. At all levels of the company, we must focus on fostering employee loyalty to the company. To achieve this, we must not only require unilateral blood to require employees' trust and loyalty to enterprises, but should be a two-way process. Enterprises must provide appropriate incentives (such as relatively superior salary, promotion of job positions, etc.), Continuously give employees the opportunity to study and train to meet the needs of employees growing in the company. Only when the employees are passionately and dedicate themselves to work, the personnel crisis will not happen, and the corporate benefits will naturally thrive, thus realizing the “win-win” of the company and the employees.

2) Product crisis

As mentioned above, the product crisis is the most fundamental crisis of the company. If there are problems with product quality, it will inevitably be blamed. It is reported that a certain professional label printing company in the south has been claimed by the customer because of its unqualified heat resistance performance for the charger label produced by a Japanese customer.

Early warning measures: Once a product crisis has occurred, it is inevitable that companies will suffer economic losses. What's more important is that the credibility of a company's business that is painstakingly managed is also likely to be greatly harmed. There is an empirical law called 1:10:100 in the management of the loss caused by the product quality problem. This rule of experience states that you may have lost a place where quality problems may have been discovered before the production of the product. If the cost of a unit is found in a certain process of the production process, that is, the product quality problem, your loss will be the cost of ten units, if the product with quality problems is put on the market (or the customer ) was discovered later, your loss will be a hundred unit costs! It can be seen that the losses caused by product quality problems are exponentially increasing, and the importance of product quality can also be known. This printing company must pay attention to quality management because it is a necessary means to ensure the quality of printed products. There are many methods for quality management. Such as process inspection methods, TQM, etc., companies can choose their own methods according to their own characteristics. In addition, printing companies must also strengthen their skills training for employees. Improve the quality of employees, truly achieve quality first, customer satisfaction first, completely away from product crisis.

3) Environmental Protection Crisis

The environmental crisis could have been classified as a social responsibility crisis. The reason why the environmental crisis was specifically put forward was because print production is still using materials that are harmful to the environment. Now the law has also begun to make corresponding requirements and restrictions on the raw materials and processes used in the printing industry. Also in the south of the country, a printing company was sued and sued for the harmful effect of the gas emitted from its screen printing shop on the environment.

Early warning measures: Today's environmental protection is increasingly valued, and of course, printing companies cannot afford to stay out of the way. With the revision and improvement of existing laws and regulations related to environmental protection, and the possible emergence of new laws and regulations in the future, with the changes in the market environment and social environment, there is currently no environmental protection crisis in printing companies. (ie potential crisis) will gradually be exposed. Therefore, in printing companies, the awareness of all employees should be raised; at the same time, printing companies should strive to develop and adopt new processes and new materials (such as new ink, cleaning solvents, etc.) to minimize the emission of pollutants. In addition, in order to prove to the society its determination, efforts and achievements in environmental protection, printing companies can strive to obtain certification from authoritative organizations, such as striving to pass ISO 14000 environmental management system certification, etc., so that there is really no worry about “environmental crisis”.

4) Production safety crisis

Although each industry has laws and regulations concerning the safe production of enterprises, we can still hear the production safety accidents of certain companies. Without a sound warning mechanism, printing companies are also prone to production safety crisis.

Early warning measures: The production safety crisis in printing companies cannot be ignored. Especially in the early years, production safety accidents can be described as repeated news. The reason is that enterprises do not pay enough attention to production safety, and employees lack the necessary safety production knowledge. Strengthening and raising employees' awareness of safety production through training is the fundamental means to solve this problem. Only when employees have sufficient knowledge of production safety, do they know how to properly allocate raw materials and operating equipment. Only in this way can production safety crisis Can be avoided.

Of course, printing companies will also have financial crisis, policy crisis, competition crisis, etc. However, due to its universality for most companies, this article will not go into details. In fact, the various crises mentioned above are not absolutely independent. They all have some degree of connection. The most obvious link is that any crises management emphasizes the importance of people, regardless of the type of In crisis management, people are placed first, so they must not be biased in the crisis management process.

4 Conclusion

It is no exaggeration to say that companies that do not understand crisis management and are not good at crisis management are not competitive companies. Smart printing business owners, please do not say crisis management has nothing to do with you, in fact it is close to you, very close to your company. Please act now to establish a complete crisis warning system and crisis emergency management system, so that the crisis really away from your business.