Crisis Management

When something serious happens, the practical response usually moves quickly and the human response is left until later. Our crisis work sits alongside your operational response: structured psychological support for the people affected, from the first hours through to the weeks that follow. We come to you — your offices, the site, or wherever your people are — and work online where distance or timing requires it.

We work with sudden death or serious injury at work, suicide, serious safety incidents and near-misses, workplace violence or threat, natural disaster and evacuation, major restructuring or retrenchment, and incidents at sea.

Who it is for

Any organisation, in any sector. The industry changes; the human response to a serious incident does not. We are usually engaged by HR, a leadership team, a safety or HSE function, or an insurer acting on behalf of the people affected.

The support itself reaches everyone the incident touches — the people directly involved, those who witnessed it, the wider team who heard about it, the managers holding the response together, and families at home.

A crisis is rarely contained to the individuals in it. It unsettles the whole system: trust, communication, who feels able to speak, how a team functions day to day. Our work attends to both — steadying the people, and helping the organisation find its footing again.

Shipping is one example of how far this reaches. There we support shipowners, managers, crewing departments and clubs: crew on board who have witnessed a fatality or serious injury, seafarers following piracy, armed robbery, detention or abandonment, survivors of a collision, grounding or fire, crew repatriated after an incident, families ashore, and the shore-side team carrying the response. The same structure applies wherever the incident happens.

How we work

Each response is delivered by a team of psychologists, counsellors and systemic coaches working together, with a scribe on site. The core format is a group session on site, followed by individual sessions on request.

We attend in person wherever we can reach your people. In the maritime sector that can include attending on board in port, and working by phone or video with a crew still at sea until the vessel berths and someone can come to them.

Before an incident: preparedness

Most organisations come to us after something has happened. The response is faster and steadier where some groundwork already exists, so we also work with organisations on a retained basis before anything goes wrong.

That means a response plan setting out who does what in the first hours; training for managers and supervisors — and, at sea, masters and senior officers — so they can recognise distress in their people and know what to say; and a standing line to our team, so that when you call, you are not explaining your organisation from scratch while a crisis is running.

When an incident happens

Our crisis intervention programme then runs in three stages.

1. Crisis response

We establish contact and make sure the people involved are immediately safe. We assess what has happened and who has been affected, then set out a short-term crisis management plan and explain it to everyone, so people know what is happening next and when.

2. Group encounter

A group trauma assessment with those affected, individual assessment for anyone who needs it, and counselling and trauma relief within the session itself. This is usually the first time the group speaks about the event together, and it matters that it happens in a held setting rather than in corridors.

3. Stabilisation and follow-through

We bring the group back together to debrief, agree a follow-through plan with clear lines of support and communication, and put an individual support plan in place for anyone carrying more than the rest. Distress after a critical incident is a normal reaction; the purpose of follow-through is to identify the smaller number for whom it does not pass.

Continuing support

Where an organisation wants it, we extend the programme beyond the intervention: individual EMDR sessions for trauma that has not settled, a follow-up support group about a week after the final session, and a longer-term arrangement giving your people a standing network of practitioners — continuity of care, resilience, and protection against burnout in the teams who carried the response.

Why we work in mixed teams

A serious incident lands on two levels at once. Individuals need clinical care, and our psychologists and counsellors provide it — trauma assessment, crisis intervention, EMDR and ongoing therapy.

The team around them needs something different. Our systemic coaches work with the group as a system: how it is communicating, where trust has been damaged, who has quietly taken on more than they can hold, and how leadership is functioning under strain. Left unattended, that layer is where the aftermath of a crisis settles and stays.

Working both levels together is what allows a team to return to functioning, rather than simply returning to work. Our practitioners bring crisis response training and long experience in trauma work, alongside colleagues who have worked inside industry — including shipping — and understand how a company, a team and a vessel actually operate under pressure.