“I had my first contact with colleagues from other higher education institutions on 23 January. We began following developments and informed crisis management.”
During January, this was still a matter of a virus outbreak in Wuhan, China, rather than a pandemic.
“We began by identifying which students and staff we had in the area and who from the area was in Uppsala and might have friends or relatives who were affected. This is typical of how we react to events in another country.”
Through the University’s travel agency, the crisis management organisation identified a number of people with links to the University who were in that area of China and began assessing how they could be helped to get home.
“It is important to book business travel through the official travel agent as we are unable to help if we don’t know where employees are.”
The crisis response organisation was activated at the end of January.
“The crisis response directors quickly realised that this was the kind of event that required the University to quickly communicate what was happening and issue clear recommendations to students and staff. As the university management is not part of the crisis response directorsgroup we also instituted daily meetings with the university management.”
The crisis response directors are heads of divisions within the University Administration.Within the divisions there are then crisis response teams with dedicated staff prepared to deal with crisis management. Christina Boman emphasises that the crisis response organisation does not make decisions.
“The role of the crisis response organisation is to act as an information hub: what has happened, facts, analyses. To create direction. The decisions that a given manager –whether that be a head of department or the vice-chancellor –takes under normal conditions remain within their remit even in a crisis. All information is reported to management on an ongoing basis so that they are in a position to make strategic decisions or alter the direction of crisis response.”
The crisis response organisation started to circulate daily situation reports to a broad group of recipients on 3 February. Daily summaries and crisis management meetings have now transitioned to weekly reports and meetings.
One communication measure instituted by the crisis response directorswas an FAQ function in the Staff and Student Portals. A generic mailbox was also opened to which all questions were referred.
“We received over 600 emails but closed the mailbox as the nature of the crisis changed and questions became more focused on work environment issues that line managers needed to deal with. We now refer questions to FAQs and line managers.”
Christina Boman explains that crisis management took on an extra dimension when she had to take time off just as things were most hectic.
“I’m sure there are critical voices regarding my absence in the midst of the crisis; however, crisis management must be able to function even if I’m not around –there must be redundancy. How we deal with crises and design crisis response organisations is critically important. Crisis management should be a function and in this case my deputy took over the role.”