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Why create a business continuity plan?
Unfortunately, there are a number of disasters, such as fire, storms, flooding, or terrorism, which could lead to you having to shut your premises for a considerable amount of time. This could have the following effects:
Creating a business continuity plan can help you minimise these effects on your organisations and even prevent the risk of them happening in the first place.
Objectives of the business continuity plan
The objectives of the plan are to enable the organisation to:
Conduct a risk assessment
The first step is to conduct a risk assessment to identify the likelihood of common disasters that might affect your organisation.
Once the risks have been identified you will need to consider the impact each risk could have and prioritise accordingly in your business continuity plan.
The plan should sit within a business continuity management programme including a business continuity policy which defines the clear roles and responsibilities of those involved in response to any disaster, the timescales for recovery of your activities and the budget available to support this. A named senior manager should be assigned responsibility for all aspects of the programme.
Appoint a team from senior management with a good understanding of the organisation to develop and implement the plan. The team should:
Appoint a business continuity plan coordinator. This is the person in charge of the team. They should be a senior executive and have appropriate authority to ensure decisions are implemented immediately.
Your business continuity plans should consist of two parts, the emergency plan, and the recovery plan.
Key elements of the emergency plan:
Key elements of the recovery plan:
Communication
Firstly, once the policy has been signed off by senior management the broad objectives of the plan should be communicated to all staff.
If disaster does occur it is important to keep everyone informed of the organisation’s progress towards full recovery via newsletters, telephone calls, social media, text, email, intranets, and websites.
It is important to keep suppliers and royal mailed informed especially with regards delivery arrangements.
Distribution and storage of your business continuity plan
Full copies of the business continuity plan should be kept by the coordinator and the deputy coordinator both on and off site, ideally in fire-resisting cabinets. Each member of the team should also have a copy.
Additional considerations
What else might you be interested in?
Cold weather advice
Careful maintenance and risk management can help prevent property damage and/or injury during the winter months.
Display screen equipment
Typically, display screen equipment (DSE) is any computer, laptop, touch screen or similar device.
