Dynamic Crisis Exercises

We work with you to understand why you want to run an exercise and the best ways to ensure it will deliver what you need.

We may ask:

• What’s your motivation for this exercise, for example, to meet an annual or regulatory requirement or a response to a recent incident or near miss?
• Do you want to stress-test a specific procedure, document or strategy?
• Are you looking to identify gaps or simulate a known vulnerability? 
• What team or teams will be involved in the exercise, operational, tactical, strategic or a combination of these?

If your team has never done a simulation before, we may recommend starting with a less complex tabletop exercise, which is a guided discussion that walks you through a scenario.

Full simulation exercises are faster-paced, more complex and suitable for more experienced teams.

We work with your people to ensure the scenario for your exercise is bespoke, challenges your team, links to your motivations and is realistic.

We do this by reviewing relevant documents, interacting with various departments and subject matter experts and drawing on our expertise of similar crises in your sector.

We produce all exercise materials and required media for review before the exercise delivery day.

Your team gathers, either in-person or virtually, for a real-time simulation.

We brief participants on what to expect during the exercise before the exercise begins. We use crisis simulator platform, accessible from any laptop or other smart device,  allowing participants to experience fast-evolving situations via multimedia prompts and triggers, social media simulations, news reports and direct communications.

Every element of the exercise is designed to help replicate the pressure and ambiguity of real-world crises.

Via the simulator, your team will need to react to:

• Emails and Teams messages
• Phone calls from role players acting as different stakeholders, for example. emergency services, journalists, insurance company or local authorities
• Developments via social media and traditional media.

We’ll challenge your teams to complete tasks related to the response, from making decisions under pressure to communicating across functions, rather than simply discussing them.

We bring the scenario to life using AI-generated, enhanced or edited content, such as simulated news reports and images or videos of the impacts on your organisation’s property, assets or reputation.

We introduce new developments via role players interact with participants through the simulator to ensure the exercise responds dynamically to the team's decisions.

The session typically lasts a few hours, depending on your organisation’s specific needs. We monitor the team’s actions throughout.

We lead a post-exercise debrief, which includes:

• A ‘hot debrief,’ where participants share immediate reactions and key learnings
• A structured self-assessment, where your team rates its own performance
• Facilitator feedback, benchmarking your team’s response against best practice.

Soon after the exercise, we’ll send a comprehensive report with:

• Analysis of the team’s performance, which can include insights on communication, decision-making, collaboration, information management and more
• A Willis Resilience Maturity Rating, benchmarking your capability against industry standards
• Clear, actionable recommendations for improvement.

This feedback helps you refine your crisis and business continuity plans, address gaps and build lasting readiness and resilience.