Besides personal injury, one of the biggest risk factors facing your business is a pack of pesky little bugs and viruses called food-borne and recreational water illnesses such as norovirus, giardiasis and cryptosporidium.

But regardless of the name, each incident of a food-borne or RWI can be spelled one way for your business: t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

In summer 2005, an outbreak of cryptosporidium at a popular New York state spraypark was linked to more than 3,000 illnesses. Before the outbreak source was discovered and state officials could rein in the damage, the number of ill patrons had spread to 36 New York counties, 26 states and two countries. The park was closed for the remainder of the summer, suffering untold financial damage. A class action lawsuit now is in the works.

At Chicago’s popular Drake Hotel in early 2006, the norovirus was blamed for causing more than 100 guests, workers and those attending a fund-raising event to become ill. The news was covered by the Chicago Tribune and then eventually reprinted on a popular hotel news source.

Bad things happen and when they do, bad news sometimes spreads quicker than the outbreak. Is your aquatics facility and staff prepared to deal with such a situation? Following is a look at the various options available to help you deal with a crisis — and make sure the answer to that question is a “yes.”

Options for success
1 Build and lead a crisis-management team and program in-house using your current employees. Conduct initial training and implement monthly training sessions and drills to keep your team ready.

Pros: Potential, but not guaranteed, cost savings up front because you’re using existing management and employees.

Cons: You may spend more time and money assembling a team than you anticipated. Also, as employees come and go, you’ll need to revamp your team to ensure quality response in the event of a negative incident. If and when an event occurs, your employees will be pulled from their regular duties to manage a crisis. This option also could cost you more in the end if your business does not rebound quickly, damaging your reputation and the bottom line.

2 Hire an outside consultant to build a crisis-management program around your existing staff. Use this consultant to conduct initial training and to manage monthly training sessions and drills.

Pros: Initial cost savings because you’re using existing staff. You’ll also have the guidance of an experienced crisis-management professional.

Cons: Similar to the drawbacks listed under Option 1, plus the expense of hiring the consultant and needing his/her assistance on a monthly basis with training sessions and drills. No protection against loss of income or damage to reputation.

3 Hire an outside consultant to build a crisis-management program for you. Periodic training sessions will be needed with your staff to ensure consistency if and when an incident occurs.

Pros: The use of a professional can provide a seamless response in the event of a crisis, helps minimize profit loss and gets business back on track. A professional team also knows which governmental agencies to contact, how to handle media inquiries, and how to manage customers and employees. It also eliminates concern over staff turnover and the quality of service.

Cons: Initial cost to build a program plus extra cost in the event of a crisis. Your business is still left unprotected from initial expenses (cleanup, customer care and health issues) and long-term expenses (loss of
income from temporary shutdown and damaged reputation).

4 Partner with a firm that can build a crisis-management program using its own staff, plus provide the benefit of insurance that offers financial support for expenses at the time of an incident and coverage against long-term loss of income.

Pros: Similar to those listed under Option 3, with the added benefit of insurance coverage not currently provided by traditional general liability coverage or any of the other options listed.

Cons: Yearly premiums for coverage.

Gathering your team
Whether you do it yourself or hire a professional consultant, make sure your waterpark resort has a trained crisis-management team in place as soon as possible.

This team should consist of a series of people, according to Julia Davis from
Specialty Risk Management Inc., a crisis-management consulting firm based in Texas.

Your team should include:
• Crisis-Management Team Leader — This can be any one of the people in this list, but he or she must have authority to make decisions. This manager has overall responsibility for directing other team members during a crisis.

• Executive Officer/Owner — This person has the authority to make decisions regarding the plan of action. He or she can quickly commit resources and funding, and make decisions based on financial trade-offs.

• Area or District Manager — This person is responsible for disseminating information and decisions between locations and the owner/corporate office.

• Human Resources Representative — He or she will work with the crisis-management team and employees to ensure that privacy and rights are protected if employees are considered the source of the illness/outbreak. The rep also keeps staffers informed so that assumed or rumored information is not communicated to the public.

• Media/Public Spokesperson — This person must be able to articulate the company message and philosophies. He or she will be responsible for addressing media and public inquiries; can be an outside consultant.

• Quality Assurance Specialist — This team member will need to address concerns/issues if the incident is linked to a food product, water supply, pool/spa water or HVAC system. It needs to be someone who understands vendor practices and can work with vendors to ensure a seamless media message.

• Marketing Representative — This person is a crucial element when rebuilding and marketing your venue to regain trust and customer loyalty. These duties may shift during an event to someone with the strongest local presence and longest relationship with the community.

Be careful in your selection of these team members. Each person plays a critical role in making sure a negative event is handled quickly and correctly to minimize customer exposure and damage to your business.

Training employees
The second element to your crisis-management team is your entire staff. Don’t leave them in the dark and assume — or hope — they will react and respond the way you want if and when a crisis occurs.

Schedule extra training sessions with your employees. Make sure they know which crisis-management team member to call if they receive a complaint from a customer, a call from media, or if the local or state health department makes a surprise visit.

In many crisis situations where there is a food-borne illness or recreational water illness outbreak, an employee at the front desk or the restaurant manager could become quickly inundated with phone calls, complaints and accusations in rapid succession.

Perform regular mock crisis situations, just as you would a fire drill. Surprise employees with a faux complaint or phone call. Watch how workers in different areas of your business respond, and then identify weak spots that need more training.

If you choose to outsource your crisis-management team to a consultant, they will be a valuable resource to help design the basic elements needed for day-to-day training to build simple and consistent reflexes in your employees.

Tracking your customers
When an outbreak occurs, whether in food or recreational water, the faster you respond with your guests the better. Because incubation periods of many diseases can take from two to 14 days, it is vitally important that you have a way to track and alert all customers and guests who may have been exposed.

Whatever tracking system you have in place, make sure the right employees or management personnel know how to use it. See to it that someone on your crisis-management team has been trained to handle this area. Even with the best tracking system in place, if no one knows what to do with it, the system will fail and customers will get their information on the evening news.

Remember, if an outbreak does occur, current guests need reassurance that they won’t get sick and that you’re handling the situation. Your staff and management can very quickly become overloaded with the additional work that comes with any crisis.

The longer your incident attracts attention, either in the media or with the local and state health officials, the greater the impact on your income and your reputation. If your business is part of a larger chain, locations several states away also could feel the financial impact if the story reaches national news outlets. In just a matter of hours, an isolated incident at your Midwest business could cause profit loss at a sister location on the East Coast.

While positive news spreads via word of mouth, negative news fast-tracks using mass media. Just as alerting your customers and guests can stop the spread of an outbreak, knowing how to handle media questions and limit exposure can truncate a larger disaster.

Successfully rebounding from a negative incident is the final, crucial step in crisis management. No matter what the event, you want to be back on offense — and making a profit — as quickly as possible.