Steps to take to create an effective business continuity

Business Continuity Planning – are you prepared for the worst?

We all go about our normal business lives in the hope that our operations will not be affected by things that are completely outside of our control, but as the world around us changes more and more of us are likely to be affected in one way or another, whether directly or indirectly.

It is key for us and our clients to ensure that if we are affected by events, that we are able to recover from them as quickly as possible, and therefore having plans in place to help us mitigate their impact is critical.

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Posted 09/03/2020

Business Continuity Process

The initial steps of the business continuity process are to assess the risks we may face and to analyse how these could negatively impact on our normal operations, for example:

Terrorist attacks – these could involve death/injury to our staff, damage to our property, closure of the areas around our businesses, loss of communications, etc.
Worldwide viruses – we are seeing the impact of the Coronavirus, with not only deaths but also people being hospitalised/quarantined for prolonged periods of time, etc.
Floods – as climate change takes hold, we are seeing more and more floods around the country with many businesses being unable to recover at all, or for a prolonged period of time.
Travel disruption – severe ongoing travel disruption has been seen across many parts of the rail network, which has led to staff turning up late on a regular basis; some employees have lost their jobs as a consequence of these continued delays.
Fire – the Grenfell disaster inquiry has raised a number of issues around the fire safety of many buildings, and until such times as reassurances are provided businesses could be at increased risk from fire.
Cyber-crime – 32% of businesses identified cybersecurity breaches or attacks in the last 12 months and cost affected businesses an average of £4,180 per breach. 32% of these businesses needed new measures to prevent future attacks, 27% took up staff time dealing with breaches/attacks, 19% had staff stopped from carrying out daily work, 48% identified at least one breach/attack a month. (Department for DCMS report 2019).

Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Once we have identified and analysed the risks that could impact on our businesses we need to look at how we can mitigate them/recover from them; having an effective business continuity plan in place, that is regularly tested, is essential; this plan should cover areas like:

Assigning responsibilities
Establishing and implementing continuity management
Understanding the business – what needs to be addressed as a priority
Plan invocation
Contact lists
Incident management
Emergency pack.

Steps you can take to create an effective BCP

Carry out a risk assessment
Record risk assessment findings in your risk register
Create risk mitigation plans
Communicate the plan to all staff
Test your plan.

Business continuity must form an integral part of your general business management strategy, as without it you may not be in a position to recover from a serious incident; many corporate clients now require us to have appropriate continuity plans in place, and therefore failing to have them could leave us at a commercial disadvantage.

A final thought for you:

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”- Alan Lakein