Any incident whether it is large or small, accident or deliberate, can cause major disruption to your business. However, by planning in advance you will be able to resume your day to day business sooner.
By understanding the risks facing the everyday running of your business or organisation, you are better able to foresee problems, and guard against them developing into serious disruptions.
Why have a Business Continuity Plan?
What do you do, for example, if your workplace catches fire?
Some hard decisions will have to be made, and made quickly. For instance:
The list of questions grows, and so do the levels of uncertainty and anxiety. Without a Business Continuity Plan you will have to rely on an ad-hoc approach to deal with these.
Business continuity planning
Here are some useful tips to help you prepare your Business Continuity Plan.
Business continuity planning has five stages:
Stage One: Understanding your business
The first stage is to consider the impact of different types of disaster on your business. Complete a Business Impact Analysis to help you identify the loss which could occur.
You will also need to fill in a risk assessment to determine what risks face the everyday running of your business. The highest priority risks should receive the most attention during the business continuity planning process.
Stage Two: Developing your plan
After you have completed your assessments you should draw up an Incident Management checklist to identify how you will respond in the event of an emergency.
This should be followed by a full Business Continuity Plan which will provide a framework for you, and your business, to respond to any crisis.
Stage Three: Testing your plan
You will need to test your final Business Continuity Plan to make sure it works in practice. In certain cases you might just want to test specific elements, such as the contact list, activation of the plan or communications equipment.
Stage Four: Training staff
It is important to provide training for staff who are directly involved in the plan, so that they are fully aware of their roles and responsibilities. It is also important to raise the awareness of any customers, suppliers and internal and external stakeholders, who may be affected.
Stage Five: Maintaining and reviewing your plan
You should test and review your Business Continuity Plan frequently to make sure it is in line with any changes made within the business. Identify a key member of staff to take ownership of the plan and review it at least once a year.
