Crisis Management and Business Continuity

Q. If I am to take crisis management and business continuity seriously, what steps do I have to take?

A. There are probably about 5 key steps:

• Accept the importance of crisis management – reject any false sense of security. The World Trade Centre Attacks of 11th September 2001 are the only reminder anyone needs of this.
• Audit all risks – identify all potential causes and analyse the potential impact on the business.
• Generate a plan - eight out of 10 businesses without a tried and tested continuity plan that suffer a major interruption to business go out of business within a year of suffering that disaster.
• Train and train again those in command and control positions. Initiate an awareness programme throughout the business.
• Put human resource issues high on the agenda.

Q. Surely it’s no good worrying about what people are feeling if I’ve got nowhere for people to work or nothing for them to work on?

A. Sure – your business continuity plans are there to ensure continuity of premises, IT and telecommunications. But it is no good having systems up if people are down. It is the HR tasks that are often neglected, as they are “soft” issues which people think are more difficult to plan for. But that isn’t the case.