Your business’s leader could well be classed as one of its most valuable assets and their remuneration packages would seem to back this up. The median salary of a FTSE 100 CEO for year ending 2017 stood at £3.93 Million per year according to CIPD findings, with the top figure coming in at £47.1 Million.

Simply earning these sums can place your key leaders at an increased level of risk from crime, combine this with their association to your business and its activities and you introduce further elements of risk, which can be heightened in times of crisis.

Given that you are investing these sums in your leaders, what if anything have you allocated to investing in their safety and security?

A business’s leader is generally seen as the face of the company. As humans we like to humanise organisations and in fact companies are going to great lengths to humanise themselves in order to gain consumer trust.

A likely consequence is that businesses leaders can be targeted in a crisis, people want to hold a person to account. There have been numerous publicised instances over the years and one such example would be the leader of the retail chain M&S.

The M&S CEO became the target of a campaign group protesting against their operations. They publicly released the leader’s home address on their website and urged protestors to visit their home.

These events, can at best be distressing to the leader and their family and at worst result in serious security issues. These events are also likely to affect how your leader manages with the business issues around the trigger or cause.

In these circumstances time is of the essence. Perhaps you act proactively to a perceived threat or perhaps you are reacting quickly to a situation you couldn’t have foreseen, either way this is where your crisis management kicks in and you turn to your procedures to ensure your leader and their family’s safety.

Or do you? Often businesses are focussed on the business response to a crisis and there can be a tendency to forget the individuals, leaving leaders and staff vulnerable away from the planned security environment of the office.

From time to time your business will face challenges, large scale redundancies, protest groups, press interest and many others. You have considered how the business will react to these events. If you haven’t already, now is the best time to consider how the business will protect its key leaders at these times.

BluSkills can help your business with its crisis and emergency planning, helping you to introduce sound and robust emergency procedures which ensure the safety of your people. Get in touch today to ensure your key leader is protected.