All businesses should prepare themselves for emergencies and develop business continuity plans. This may help organisations to stay in business and recover more quickly if serious disruption occurs.
You should think about the parts of your business that are crucial in keeping it going.
Establish what your customers expect from you and what you need to be able to provide. Identify the business relationships within your organisation and those with your suppliers and customers.
Think about the possible risks to your business, how likely they are to happen and what impact they will have on you.
Keep your business continuity plan simple so that it can be easily understood by everyone.
Your plan should include the following elements:
- Use simple language that will be easily understood
- Identify who is responsible for doing what
- Use easy-to-follow checklists
- List your priorities to identify which tasks need to be dealt with first and which tasks can be left until later
- Keep your plan up to date. Make sure you have a method to update it if personnel, locations or risks change
- Plan for worst case scenarios
- Make sure all employees are involved in the plan through awareness-raising, participation and training
- Rehearse your plan and make sure you update it if the rehearsal identifies any improvements
Further advice
Contact [email protected] for free general advice on business continuity planning.