The CEOE headquarters has hosted the first edition of the Intersectorial Crisis Management Forum organized in collaboration with Banco Santander. An event in which representatives of some of the leading Spanish companies have discussed the importance of carrying out a good crisis management based on technology and employee training to maintain the company's reputation.
The event was inaugurated by the Vice President of CEOE, Íñigo Fernández de Mesa, and by the Global Head of Resilience, Recovery and Resolution of Santander Bank, Alicia Sanchis. Both have highlighted the importance of people as a management center in times of difficulty: "Before a crisis, priorities must be established and the first one is people," Fernández de Mesa explained.
Along these lines, he stressed that in order to strengthen business resilience, it is necessary to carry out a retrospection exercise, encourage creativity, work in teams and train.
The Forum has had three panels of experts to deal with all these issues in a transversal way. The first one has focused on how companies can prepare for possible crises in the next decade and has had the participation of Francisco Gutiérrez, Repsol Emergency Response Coordinator; Manuel Torres, Business Continuity director of Bankia; Javier Orduñez, Global Business Continuity manager of Mapfre; Carlos Manchado, CISO de Naturgy; and Jesús Muñoz, Chief Security Officer of Telefónica. This panel has highlighted the importance of adapting to different scenarios to face crises: “Companies must carry out joint drills to respond to complex crises,” said Muñoz.
In the second panel, the challenges and opportunities of the technological era for effective crisis management have been discussed. In it, Rubén Olague, Cyber Respond of Banco Santander, intervened; Carlos Vizoso, CTO of ESIC Business & Marketing; Daniel Zapico, CISO of Globalia; Juan Manuel Gil, general director of F24 Spain; Jesús Revaliente, Global Chief Security Officer Iberia & Latam de Securitas Direct; and as moderator Julio San José, Cybersecurity partner of EY.
In this block, the relevance of technology has been highlighted, which offers opportunities that cannot be missed in terms of crisis, although all participants have agreed that it is essential to combine it with the human factor.
The last panel, which has focused on communication as an amplifier-mitigator of crises, has been moderated by Begoña Beneytez, Global Head of Reputation Risk of Banco Santander, and Javier Vicente has participated in it; Director Organization, Transformation and Talent of Cofares; Juan Emilio Maillo, Communication Director of Telefónica; Miguel López Quesada, Director of Communication and Institutional Relations of Gestamp; Sebastián Cebrián, general director of Villafañe Consulting; and Javier Fernández, Corporate Communication Director of Mapfre.
"We are in a permanent, structural crisis, and the concept of resilience begins to gain ground," López Quesada said during his speech. Along these lines, Cebrián has added that the communication manual has died because organizations coexist with crises.
The importance of communication in crisis management
The closing ceremony was carried out by the CEOE CEO, Antonio Garamendi; the CFO of Banco Santander, José García Cantera; and Jorge Gómez of HSI. All have highlighted the idea that good communication is essential for crisis management. “We have to improve trust and work on common protocols,” explained García Cantera.
For his part, Antonio Garamendi has stressed that from CEOE that communication is already working in depth, highlighting the importance of prevention in the face of crisis management.
As he said, one of the keywords in the field of communication must always be "prevention."