Business Continuity Planning

In a previous article on governance I referred to Business Continuity Planning.  This article goes into that in a little more detail and steers you to some resources that can help you develop yours. 

A Business Continuity Plan is a plan to ensure your organisation can continue to operate through severe disruptions.  It ensures that when the event happens you have a back-up plan that you can implement straight away.  It is a very practical, specific, hands-on tool to help you be as well prepared as possible for a crisis, should one occur.  There are lots of different resources to help you do this – I have provided links to those provided by the Queensland and NSW Governments in the Resources section. These resources are designed primarily for commercial businesses, but business continuity planning is essentially the same whatever kind of organisation you run.

The following are the key steps in putting together a Business Continuity Plan.

1. Assessing Risks

The first step in business continuity planning is to assess your risks.  This is, of course, an element of your wider risk management planning, but specifically focused on the risks to your continuity - that is, events that could prevent you continuing with ‘business as usual’.  There are many such events:

• Climate disasters such as bushfires, cyclones or floods which can disrupt your operation along with your entire community.

• A community-wide disease outbreak, whether a global pandemic like we faced in 2020-21 or a more localised outbreak. 

• Cyber-attacks or other IT failures that disable your computer system.

• A disaster at your place of business such as fire, violent incident or structural failure.

• An unplanned loss of key personnel.

• A sudden loss of a significant proportion of your revenue.

You would need to assess which of these you are most vulnerable to, and base your planning around that.  For instance, your community may not be subject to flooding, but may be exposed to bushfire risk, you may be structured in a way that you are not dependent on one or two individual staff members but may have a large part of your income from one source.

2. Prevention and Preparation

The second thing you should focus on is what steps do you need to take to reduce your risk or to prepare in advance for an event.  The better prepared you are, the faster you can spring into action when the time comes.  Depending on the crisis you are preparing for, this would have a number of components.  For instance it might include:

• Ensuring your key documents and information are backed up remotely (e.g. to the Cloud) and accessible from alternative locations by multiple people.

• Ready access to sources of information about the emergency as it unfolds, including Bureau of Meteorology, Fire and Rescue services, Police and ABC Local Radio.

• Having contact details for your staff and tenants/clients, and having these accessible to you from a safe location, so that you can contact them in an emergency.

• Having details of your insurance coverage readily available so as to enable a prompt claim for any loss or damage.

• Having a pre-planned alternative location or arrangement if you are unable to work from your office.

• Having evacuation plans for your office and for your tenants which can be smoothly implemented if needed – this may also include practicing this via drills.

• Ensuring key people in your organisation have the details of the key emergency services you may need to collaborate with in an emergency.

• Having a clear sense of the critical parts of your work that need to be maintained or rapidly restored through an emergency. 

All of these things should not only be in place, but should be regularly checked and updated with the people who will need to use them, so that the preparation is not lost or forgotten over time.

3. Three phases of disaster

In discussing disasters or crises, we often talk in three phases – emergency response, clean-up and recovery/rebuilding.  The degree to which it’s possible to plan for each of these is limited by the fact that you can’t know what the shape of the crisis will be.  The purpose of a Business Continuity Plan is not to plan for all of this, but to ensure you can continue your essential work while it goes on.

In the Emergency Phase the priority is to make sure everyone is safe and, where possible, to limit property damage (but only if this doesn’t place people at risk).  Your emergency response plan will include things like an evacuation plan for your office and for any tenants who need it, a process to check on the welfare of your staff and tenants, use of evacuation centres where relevant and the option of helping neighbours or other nearby services if possible.

In the Clean-Up Phase, which could last for days or weeks, your community is in a degree of chaos and resources are mainly focused on assessing damage and addressing residual health and safety risks.  Your business continuity tasks revolve around how you can keep delivering the essential parts of your operation (possibly modified by the crisis).  At this point, any non-urgent tasks can be left until later – you will be focused on doing the bare minimum of your normal work that is needed to keep everyone safe so that as many of your resources as possible can be directed to the clean-up effort. 

In planning for this you need to have a clear view of what is essential, and how you can deliver it.  Where will you operate from?  How can your staff access key data and communication systems?  How will you coordinate a team that may be scattered and focused on personal crises?  As in the emergency phase, the key here is ensuring the health and wellbeing of your staff and tenants/clients.

In the Recovery Phase, which could last for months or years,  efforts will be focused on the return to normal, or to the ‘new normal’ whatever that may be.  For most emergency or disaster situations different people are affected in different ways.  For instance, if your community experiences a flood, some homes and businesses will not be affected at all and be able to get back to normality quickly, some will have minor effects which can be quickly cleaned up, and some will have major or catastrophic impacts which could turn their lives upside down.  As an organisation, you may be in any of these categories – you may be able to return to your office and pick up the reins quickly, you may have a quick clean-up to do before you return, or you may be searching for new premises and replacing damaged equipment.  Your staff and tenants may well be at varying points on this continuum, as may your key service partners.

This is the point at which you will discover if you have done your planning well.  I you have, you will be able to quickly re-establish your operation – your records and processes will be intact, you will either be able to move back into your office or set up your new arrangement, you will know how things stand with each of your staff and tenants, you will be able to replace anything you lost with the aid of insurance, and you will then get on with either doing your normal business, doing whatever is required in the changed situation, or perhaps a bit of both. 

Flexibility and Responsiveness

Each crisis is different, and there is no way you can plan for all contingencies.  By having all the pieces of a continuity plan in place, you ensure as best you can that your organisation is resilient to stresses and shocks.  Beyond this, your biggest asset will be your flexibility and your willingness to encourage personnel to make decisions on the ground and respond to what is in front of them.  Along with this, you will be helped by having a clear focus throughout your organisation on the safety and wellbeing of people as your number one priority – in a crisis, your team need to know they can do whatever they need to do to ensure this safety for one another, for your tenants and clients and for others in your community.

Resources

Here’s a very simple introduction to Business Continuity Planning from Infoxchange.

A number of State governments have guides to developing business continuity plans – here is the NSW one with links also to other related guides; here is the Queensland one which also contains a link to a plan template.