Business Continuity Plans Save Money and Lives

Effective Business Continuity Plans Can Keep Your Business Running in Dire Situations

Natural or human made disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes and fires can eat up your company’s profits in a matter of moments. Power failures and computer system crashes can also rob your company of opportunities to connect with customers, possibly even putting your customer’s private data at risk of exposure. The good news is that an effective business continuity plan can keep your business running in dire situations.

: Creative Business Picture by Ltljtlj at Wikipedia Commons

Business continuity plans, also referred to as disaster recovery plans, are more than written documents created and approved by creative business leaders. Business continuity plans are interactive documents you and your employees use to test your responses to emergency situations (e.g. fires, floods, earthquakes). Fire evacuation tests, computer system exercises at alternate work locations and emergency call tree practice sessions are types of live events you’re encouraged to conduct to measure the effectiveness of your business continuity plans.

Steps to Create Your Business Continuity Plan

If you’re a creative business leader whose company is comprised of three or more departments, consider assigning one employee from each department to create and maintain a plan for the specific department she or he is assigned to. Also create a high level plan for the entire firm. Departmental plans can be used to respond to business interruptions that only impact certain departments at your firm, while the high level plan would be used in the event your entire company is impacted by a business interruption.

To create your business continuity plan take steps such as:

Build a call tree that list the names, home addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses for each employee in your company. For ease of call flow, build a separate call tree for each department.
Identify critical employees and job functions (e.g. technology infrastructure managers).
Identify critical business procedures (e.g. conduct daily stock market trades, file and run bi-weekly payroll reports)
List your key customers or clients, including their names, addresses, business telephone numbers and email addresses. If you have their mobile contact information, include it as well. (Contact these people should you experience a business interruption, letting them know an approximate time when you expect to have your business operating on its normal schedule again. Also give them contact names and telephone numbers should they have questions during the business interruption.)
Identify one to two alternate work locations for critical employees. Some firms like Sungard lease alternate work locations to firms; you can also test your computer systems at these alternate work locations.
Review each business continuity plan and distribute final plans to employees. Some employees may only need a plan for their specific department. Remind employees that details in the plans are to be kept confidential; when employees department your creative business, retrieve the plans from them.

Regularly Test Your Business Continuity Plans

As previously mentioned it’s important that you regularly test your business continuity plans. For example, you could conduct a call tree test once a quarter or twice a year. You could work with your company’s security officer to conduct building evacuation tests once a quarter.

Over time, employees may start to feel comfortable walking through evacuation, alternate work location and call tree exercises, possibly increasing their confidence to respond to actual emergencies or business interruptions should they occur. Also ensure that contact information for each employee at your creative business is regularly updated and kept accurate.

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Sources:

http://www.ready.gov/business/plan/planning.html (FEMA: Continuity of Operations Planning)