Business continuity
What is business continuity?
Business continuity is about identifying what aspects of an
organisation’s activities and resources are essential and planning
how key services will be maintained in the event of an emergency.
The council has a number of business continuity plans and
procedures in place and is further developing plans to cover all
major areas of activity. Additionally, the council helps promote
the concept of business continuity management to businesses and
voluntary agencies so that they can plan to continue their
operations in the event of disruption.
Why should businesses prepare for
emergencies?
Because it makes real business sense. Every year many businesses
suffer major disruption and many never recover. The Chartered
Management Institute's Business Continuity Management Survey 2011
identified that 84 per cent of managers whose organisations
activated their business continuity management (BCM) arrangements
in the last 12 months agreed that it effectively reduced disruption
and over three quarters (77 per cent) agreed that the cost of
developing BCM is justified by the benefit it brings their
organisation. In short, unplanned disruptive incidents such as
fire, terrorism a disease pandemic or severe weather can cause
serious interruption to business operations. This is bad for
employees, shareholders, customers and the local community.
If you want to stay in business after disaster strikes you need
to undertake some careful pre-planning. You will find that it is
quick, easy and inexpensive to create a business continuity plan.
You can also use it as a selling point - a proven resilience and
business continuity programme will distinguish you from your
competitors.
Stage 1 - Analyse your business
The first step of a business continuity plan is to think about
the parts of your business that are crucial in keeping it
going.
- Identify your core business requirements. What do customers
expect from you? What do you need to be able to provide and how
quickly?
- Identify the interactions that take place within your
organisation and between its customers and suppliers Identify areas
where you are vulnerable.
- What are the most likely and greatest risks to your business?
How likely are they to happen? What effect will they have on your
business? Write down your own examples of incidents and lists ways
of how to cope with them.
Stage 2 - Develop your strategy
Having analysed your business and assessed the risks involved,
you now know which areas to focus your plan on, be it on customer
care during an emergency or on having remote access to your phone
system. You will also know which type of potential incident would
hit your business worst and how to minimise the damage that it
could cause.
You should now know whether you need to be fully operational to
survive, or whether it will be enough to operate at 50%. Do you
know your break-even point? If not, it is very important to work it
out.
Establish what is important to the survival of your business and
what the risks are. Whatever your business, there are a number of
options open in response to the risks you identify:
- Accept the risk – do nothing and manage the consequences of an
incident if and when it occurs.
- Accept the risk but put some contingency arrangements in place
to provide you with help to continue your business after an
incident Attempt to reduce the likelihood and impact of the risk to
an acceptable level.
- Attempt to reduce the risk and put contingency arrangements in
place to provide help to ensure your business can be
maintained.
- Reduce the risk to the point where outside help won’t be
required.
Stage 3 - Develop your plan
Once you have decided on your strategy, the next stage is to
develop your plan. Be sure to use non-technical language, making it
accessible and easy to understand by everyone. The plan should
enable you to restore your business to an acceptable level of
activity, keeping your critical activities going until such time as
you can return to normal business.
It is important to update your plan regularly: you do not want
to be in a crisis with an out of date plan. Remember, it will need
to be updated when key personnel change, when you move to a
different location or when your key clients or suppliers change.
You might wish to expand it and add local information, or fresh
ideas to make it even more useful.
- Identify who is responsible for doing what.
- Use easy to follow checklists.
- Provide a clear list of what needs to be dealt with first and
what can be left until later.
- Agree a method of ensuring that your plan is kept up to date
and contains details of current personnel and risks.
- Plan for worst case scenarios.
Stage 4 - Build a business continuity culture
Success in creating and embedding business continuity management
is dependant upon it becoming an integral part on managing the
business of your organisation. A key element will be awareness
raising, training, participation and ownership of the plan by all
employees.
Stage 5 - Rehearse and maintain your plan
Once the plan has been developed, it needs to be tested. How
will you know whether you have omitted something if you don't test
your plan? It is also vital to test the plan with all your staff so
that each employee is fully aware of their responsibilities.
- Read through your plan as a group. Ask at each point whether
you are recommending the correct action in the right order.
- Check your telephone cascade works. Are the right people on the
right numbers? Does everybody know whom he or she should contact?
What would you do if the phones weren't working?
- Carry out a full rehearsal. Make sure all elements of the plan
work together.
Useful websites
In addition to the related links on the left, the following
websites may also help you prepare your business continuity
plan:
Downloads
You will need Adobe Acrobat to view PDF documents. If you do not
already have this, you can download it from the Adobe
website. If you require these documents in an accessible
format, please contact us.
