What To Do When It Isn’t Business As Usual

With floods, fires, IT failures, power outages, and global pandemics, any organisation can experience a serious incident which prevents it from continuing normal operations. Whatever the size of your organisation, the ability to respond quickly and decisively can make the difference between success and failure in returning to ‘business as usual’.

Benefits of continuity planning

Research has also shown that organisations with business continuity plans in place can respond to events much more effectively compared to those without those measures in place. Some reasons for continuity planning include:

• Sensible and good business practice
• Demonstrates to customers and suppliers that there are plans in place to ensure service is maintained in the event of an incident
• Reduces the thinking time necessary to consider how to proceed should an incident occur
• Instils an orderly and effective control over what could be a chaotic and an ineffective approach
• Helps to contain incidents, minimising casualties and the extent of the damage, and to speed up the recovery process
• Demonstrates to your employees that the company values their livelihoods and is prepared to invest to protect both
• Reassures investors and other stakeholders that the business can continue to trade

New guidance and testing your plans

RISCAuthority, a research scheme supported by the Fire Protection Association (FPA) and a number of UK insurers which publishes a range of risk management guides, have recently made two new guides available to help organisations with planning for continuity.

“What does good look like in Business Continuity Management?” Provides a summary of the areas that a business continuity plan would be expected to cover.

To ensure that plans are effective, it is important that they are tested both to identify any issues and to allow those involved to practise their roles. Tabletop exercises are one way of simulating real-life scenarios in a controlled environment. “Comprehensive guide to running BCM tabletop scenario exercises” provides guidance on running such an exercise.

Both of these guides are free to download from the FPA’s website.

Our Risk Management team offers Business Continuity Planning as a service.  To find out more about how to help mitigate risks and threats that could disrupt your business, please get in touch using the form below.