Whether they have one or not, most
businesses know that they should have a plan against adversity. There are
websites, step by step software and consultants out there to help you, but over
successive posts we would like to share a DIY perspective of planning for
business continuity, disaster recovery and how this meshes with Emergency
Management.
In essence,
your Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a plan to continuing operations under
adverse conditions. It analyses internal and external threats, and the
responses available to you to avoid, reduce or respond to these risks.
Plans will
vary with the mission and scale of organisations, and may focus on supply chain
interruption, evacuation drills, loss or damage of critical infrastructure,
security and corporate reputation. It can be an excellent organisational learning
tool if underpinned by a systematic review of all the processes required to
keep your enterprise going in the short and medium term; that is, what needs to
happen each day, week, month or year to keep going.
Business
Continuity planning looks at non-critical
processes, and what happens if they fail. It should also be a feedback loop;
the plan is a working document as events unfold or conditions change, so the
process or review – reporting when and how to whom – should also be addressed.
You should be able to track versions of your BCP via incident logs over time.
A sub-set of
the plan is your Disaster Recovery Plan;
this defines what a critical service
interruption is, and the systematic approach that can be taken to prevent or
reduce risk or activate response procedures. (This will be covered in the next
blog.)
Fleshing out the BCP
Divide your
business processes into the major areas of concern and, in order of process or
importance, itemise the key tasks that need to happen. Common categories are
people, financial, premises, sales processes, technical or production processes.
Most of these
processes should be happening already, but you may also wish to link tasks to
individual performance indicators for particular staff; being clear about
time frames, deadlines and responsibilities is important, and managers will want
to be able to check periodically that the processes supposed to happen actually
are being done as per the plan. Key tests may also be scheduled.
Even routine
tasks can prove toxic to an organisation if not rigorously observed. Your audit
could include checklists for running accounts, invoices, and back ups,
month-end and year end processes; compliance with tax and labour regulations;
tracking cash flow and budgets; checklists of key dates (BAS reports and
payments, insurance renewals, accreditation or first aid certificate renewal
dates, leases on assets and premises, staff leave and public holiday
arrangements, and WHS site checks all come to mind). Regular marketing
deadlines, training, new business development planning and business documentation
processes could also be considered in the long term as part of your normal business
cycle.
You may wish
to bring together the plan as an overview (more like a policy) and specify the
detail in a handbook, with all the contacts, file locations and specifics. One
advantage of doing this is clarity; in a long detailed document it is easy to
get bogged down with detail. Having an overview may also be easier for you in
terms of confidentiality if you are asked to produce this document in external sales
contexts.
BCP and Business Planning
The level of
regulatory compliance in Australian business is now such that Well Done took
the step of employing a CPA as our Compliance Officer; as we moved from a small
to medium scale business, the Board deemed the risks of not doing so to be
unacceptable. But it’s not an unrewarding burden. Take the next step and you
can use this information to look for gaps in your existing plans, and do a
periodic SWOT analysis for threats and opportunities. Do this as a group
activity with your key management and invite some independent external experts
every year or two and you should be better able to spot how your organisation
is exposed to risk and think outside the box about where and how you might take
the business to the next level.
The importance of Perspective
The top down
view can be interesting because it can flag to you considerations that you
might otherwise miss when hiring new staff, for instance. In my previous blog,
HR expert Anita Radisic emphasised the importance of defining the job and
looking at the demonstrated skill set and the attitude of the applicants in
hand. From a business continuity perspective, however, your staff have
strategic significance as well.
Based on our
business continuity planning, we realised that it is vital to ensure that all
key management always have an acting second in the wings, and that the ability
to select at least some staff for internal promotion is a prerequisite for this
to work. Internal promotion career pathways can also help develop understanding
across different parts of the business and be a great motivator for your
existing staff when opportunities are fairly offered on merit. From the
business’ point of view, this is actually also a low risk approach, because if
you employ someone with potential in one role, you can see how they perform in
a range of situations and test them out in acting roles before committing to
the higher appointment.
Recruitment
is also a great way to buy-in new skills or knowledge to the organisation. When
you recruit new people from outside the organisation for management roles,
consider what new skill set that they can bring to your business, and what the
existing staff can learn from them.
Continuity of Knowledge and Skills
How knowledge
is routinely shared within the organisation impacts on your ability to respond
to adverse conditions.
At Well Done
we plan to have several people familiar with at least some parts of all work
tasks. Client Services requests have been moved to centrally monitored CSR
ticketing system with appropriate ETA response time frames so that the first
available team member can do the work. Emails to individuals are discouraged as
you have continuity problems if a person is on leave for any reason, and they
may not be actioned in the time frame. The use of some group email addresses
routed to several individuals by function can also reduce reliance on
individuals.
We also have
internal web-based wikis for different work groups (IT, Operations and Sales)
to help newcomers orient to tasks, and as a time saving reference for more
experienced staff about facts and processes that are used less often. Your
business has paid staff to compile this information and it shouldn’t leave the
business when individuals eventually move on!
Formal
training documentation is helpful in this regard also, and at Well Done we have
a number of internally produced training modules to support various services
and that, taken as a group, are structured to facilitate operator progression
through skills based queues in our Call Centres.
Centrally
accessible procedural information linked to your BCP will also help you respond
to adverse events. If this is sufficiently detailed, it will enable managers to
delegate tasks across the team during an incident.
Taking it Seriously
One
disadvantage of off the shelf software approach to BCP is that, as with some
aspects of OH&S planning, if it seems fanciful, your people won’t take it
seriously.
By sticking
to the core threats to your business, and the key processes that you know must
happen without fail, your plan can become a useful checklist to avoiding
problems or at least managing risk. Your staff and managers also need to take
responsibility for their part of the work, which they will also avoid if it
seems irrelevant.
Relevance and
process, and commitment driven from the top of your organisation down are all vital
to the successful implementation of your Business Continuity Plan.
A final note
This blog has
been written from the viewpoint of a business, but business continuity does
figure prominently in our work at Well Done because we support so many other
businesses and government agencies. Outsourcing call handling or escalation
activations of staff and contractors on call to a specialist contact centre is
an option most businesses should consider in their BCP, and the discipline of
specifying this work for an independent third party is a good one for most
managers in fair weather or foul.
For more information:
- www.searchrecovery.com – for a more technical BCP template
- A number of state government departments offer free templates to work through (e.g. - www2.business.qld.gov.au/.../Business_Continuity_Plan_Template.doc)
We suggest
that you heavily customise or totally rewrite any template you use to fit your style of business and internal
documentation to encourage your people to ‘own’ it. You can always add further
detail over time as part of the process.
For sales
enquiries with Well Done - www.welldone.net.au/contact.php
