Navigate crisis with confidence. We help you prepare for, respond to, and emerge stronger from any crisis.
Crisis management consulting services
An integrated response to crisis
Whether facing a corporate scandal, data breach, or geopolitical tension, every crisis brings complexity and uncertainty. While each crisis is unique, common threats cross sectors—financial losses, reputational damage, erosion of stakeholder trust, and more.
At PwC’s Global Centre for Crisis and Resilience (GCCR), our mission is to help you prepare, respond, and emerge stronger from any crisis.
Our holistic, tailored crisis management services cover the entire crisis lifecycle—from assessments and training to strategic response and recovery to after-action review—enabling you to sustain operations, manage disruption, and protect stakeholder trust. Together, we build resilience for whatever challenges lie ahead.
86% of respondents who plan to invest in crisis management during the next two years.
76% of business leaders who said disruptions had medium/high impact on operations.
Our capabilities and offerings
Crisis preparedness
Not all business shocks escalate into crises. When you’re prepared to manage disruptions, the risk of widespread impact decreases, and your organisation can recover faster and emerge stronger when a crisis unfolds.
Effective crisis planning and preparation deliver strong returns, regardless of an incident’s scope or type.
We offer four crisis preparedness services—Assess, Design, Train, and Simulate—to diagnose and enhance your organisation’s ability to respond to disruption, build resilience, and emerge stronger.
Crisis planning and preparation helps your organisation:
- Encounter fewer bumps in the road during your response
- Save critical time and resources
- Recover more quickly
- Emerge stronge
95% of respondents to PwC’s Global Crisis Survey 2021 report that their crisis management capabilities need improvement.
Understanding your existing capabilities to respond to a crisis increases awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, and helps you prioritise and allocate resources.
We help you establish a baseline using measurement criteria and analytics across nine components, providing a tailored roadmap for improvement. The assessment is powered by a dynamic, web-based platform that quantifies and benchmarks your readiness to respond.
Your crisis response plan is the foundation of an effective crisis management programme, providing critical structure and guidance when an unplanned event strikes. It includes such things as articulating crisis-level scenarios and methods to assess impact, defining how incidents are escalated, and identifying key actions to consider.
A robust and integrated crisis management programme helps mitigate risks, provides clear structure and guidance to respond, and keeps you ahead of the curve when challenges arise.
Working side-by-side with our team you’ll develop programme scope, governance structure (including roles and responsibilities), a threat severity matrix, escalation triggers, and an implementation roadmap so that your organisation will be prepared to mobilise, stabilise and strategise in a case of crisis.
Effective crisis response depends on resilient leaders and core team members who clearly understand their roles and work seamlessly together.
In high-stress situations, confidence can waver so identifying your core crisis team early and building their comfort and competence in their roles is essential for a strong, cohesive response. Leaders and core team members must be prepared to make timely decisions, manage actions, and coordinate effectively amid rapidly changing information and high pressure. Familiarity with responsibilities and potential scenarios increases awareness and readiness across the entire organisation.
Our holistic, innovative training strengthens the resilience of your leaders and core team members alike, equipping them to activate crisis plans effectively—empowering your team to respond confidently when it counts and helping your organisation adapt and emerge stronger.
Reading about roles and processes is one thing; practicing those roles and processes is a step that truly distinguishes organisations. We guide your team through exercises that build the knowledge, skills and critical muscle memory needed to respond to a crisis with clarity and confidence.
Practicing responding to realistic threat scenarios in crisis simulations and exercises helps your organisation identify gaps and strengths. As you pinpoint potential outcomes and think through how to emerge stronger from each scenario, you’ll develop a roadmap to drive decision making, govern information collection and address other challenges in times of crisis.
Crisis response
In a crisis, timely action driven by clear facts and expertise is critical.
An effective crisis response balances tactical execution with strategic narrative-building:
Crisis structure
“The How”
Organises your response with clear ownership and accountability, while enabling transparent information sharing to inform key decisions.
Crisis strategy
“The What”
Establishes and communicates crisis response guiding principles that align with strategic objectives. Keeps an eye "looking around the corner."
Crisis response narrative
“The Why”
Aligns workstream activities to strategic objectives, provides a framework to track progress, and enables communication with stakeholders.
At PwC’s Global Centre for Crisis and Resilience (GCCR), we guide you through the three waves of crisis response: Mobilise, Stabilise, and Strategise.
Mobilise: We help you rapidly assess the situation, prioritise resources and take swift action to gain clarity and control.
Stabilise: We support stabilising your operations, creating space to make informed decisions, communicate confidently and lead effectively amid uncertainty.
Strategise: We work with you to anticipate risks, embed lessons learned and strengthen your resilience for the future.
Leveraging proven methodologies, tools and expertise, PwC empowers you to navigate crises effectively and emerge stronger.
91% of PwC’s Global Crisis Survey 2023 respondents faced a disruption other than the pandemic in the past two years.
Respond offerings
- Strategic crisis response & coordination
- Crisis command centre stand-up
- Stakeholder mapping and engagement
- Crisis strategy and scenario planning
- After-action review
- Crisis communications & reputation management
Strategic crisis response & coordination
With PwC, your crisis response draws on real-world experience and the support of a battle-tested team. Our integrated approach delivers clarity and organisation from day one, enabling swift action that saves critical time. You’ll have the facts and data you need, along with the space to think, make informed decisions, communicate effectively, and lead with confidence as the situation evolves. Equally important, you’ll gain meaningful insights to strengthen your response to future crises.
We help you:
- Establish a clear governance structure for response
- Identify functional workstreams and assign owners
- Define the response approach and set priorities
- Make immediate crisis decisions grounded in verified facts
- Anticipate upcoming risks and prepare potential actions
Crisis command centre stand-up
Establishing an integrated crisis command centre is vital to help organisations swiftly understand, prioritise, and manage the impacts of a crisis. Our Global Centre for Crisis and Resilience can support you in setting up a command centre that acts as the central hub for coordinated decision-making and real-time information sharing.
Our approach includes assembling a cross-functional core team, defining clear roles and responsibilities, and developing core crisis response principles tailored to your organisation’s needs. The command centre facilitates centralised intelligence gathering, operational health reporting, and stakeholder engagement strategies—all critical for effective crisis management.
We also provide ongoing support to continuously monitor, reassess, and adapt your command centre operations as the crisis evolves, ensuring you remain agile and well-prepared to respond to changing circumstances.
Stakeholder mapping and engagement
Effectively engaging with stakeholders during a crisis requires a deep understanding of their evolving needs, concerns, and expectations throughout each phase of disruption.
Our approach begins with detailed stakeholder mapping to identify and prioritise both internal and external stakeholder groups critical to your organisation. We then work with you to develop a tailored engagement strategy that aligns with your organisational objectives and the dynamic nature of the crisis. This strategy is integrated into a clear, actionable plan designed to facilitate timely, transparent communication and foster trust.
By linking engagement efforts to real-time decision-making, we help you maintain control, enhance collaboration, and mitigate reputational risks as situations unfold rapidly. This ensures you stay ahead of challenges and make informed decisions under pressure.
Crisis strategy and scenario planning
Rapidly changing environments in a crisis create uncertainty around the appropriateness of response strategies and the sufficiency of preparation efforts.
Crisis strategy and scenario planning help you evaluate multiple potential scenarios and develop contingency plans that identify risks and uncover opportunities. This approach increases your confidence in navigating disruption by preparing for a range of possible outcomes.
Our proven framework enables you to respond to immediate challenges while anticipating future events that could impact your strategy. By balancing short-term actions with long-term foresight, you’re better equipped to adapt, protect your organization, and maintain resilience as the crisis unfolds.
After-action review
Organisations that analyse their performance during a crisis response are better placed to identify and prioritise areas for actionable improvement.
Our after-action review captures findings and recommendations from an independent, discrete investigation into root causes as well as your organisation’s actions, inactions and inefficiencies during the crisis.
You will receive prioritised recommendations and a roadmap to improve resilience and strengthen your response model for future incidents, supporting continuous learning and enhanced preparedness.
18% of respondents have an optimised or integrated after-action review process in place.
Crisis communications & reputation management
Clear, fact-based communication forms the foundation of an effective crisis response. Organisations that maintain openness with employees, external stakeholders and the public are more likely to emerge from a crisis with their reputation intact.
Our crisis communications approach complements external public relations and communication support. We collaborate with you to develop a tailored communication strategy, monitor media coverage and public perception, and assess the impact of your public relations efforts.
By focusing on transparency, accurate information and swift responses, we help you maintain stakeholder trust, protect your brand and strengthen your position through and beyond the crisis.
