Attainium Insights, short, practical observations and examples drawn from real-world tabletop exercises and business continuity planning.
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All of a sudden, you have a totally remote workforce, or you're part of one. You can't walk down the hall to talk to people or call everyone into your office quickly. What is this doing to collaboration? What are you doing to communicate with these workers? Are they productive and happy? What strategies and tools have you made available for them? And how are they interacting with each other? We found a few articles that might help.
Many of you already have business continuity plans for the regular flu season, and the plans for Coronavirus/COVID-19 will run along those same lines. Typically, business continuity planning deals with disruptions that occur sporadically (earthquakes, blackouts, etc.) But pandemic disruptions occur over weeks and months, ramping up and then hopefully slowing down. The World Health Organization now defines Coronavirus as a pandemic. As such, planning for continuity during this time will have some of the same features as regular continuity planning, but there will be many differences. For one thing, HR will play a much more significant role in planning for a pandemic than they usually would in typical disruptions.
Your Business Continuity Plan was completed about 18 months ago. Everyone was trained on the plan and it was subsequently tested. Since then, nobody has given business continuity planning another thought. Fortunately, there have been no incidents that required you to use it. But what would happen if the building flooded or burned, data was breached, or an active shooter got into the building? Would the plan still work?
Developing a crisis management plan for a meeting or event takes a lot of work and coordination and finishing it is a serious accomplishment. What are you going to do with that plan now that it's finished? Sure, you'll send it around to the C-Suite and other relevant parties, who will no doubt congratulate you (deservedly) on a job well done. Go ahead and pat yourself and your team on the back, but this is no time to rest on your laurels because the job is far from over
The recent situation with Iran brings again to mind the need to be aware of the potential for terrorism, both from overseas and from US actors who have been radicalized. While many of us have kept the possibility of terrorism in our sights, many others have become lax in their risk assessment and planning for the effects of terrorism. We hope these articles will help you refocus on this threat.
For every event or meeting, you have a plan. In fact, you may have several plans - fire safety plans, evacuation plans, and other types of emergency procedures in place. You also may have plans to deal with threats and acts of terrorism. You've carefully identified, evaluated and planned for the most likely risks. But, as much as you have a comprehensive, integrated plan in place to protect people and property, there always are things you can't even anticipate, never mind plan for. This doesn't mean they won't happen. In the immortal words of Murphy, anything that can go wrong will. So, even when you've identified all the known risks, there still may be surprises.
Communication is a critical component of planning for business continuity. Whether it's a crisis response team communicating among themselves or communicating to the public, communication is an area that should be considered in your business continuity plan. All too often, however, not enough time and attention is devoted to this area. In these articles, we are providing some information about this critical aspect of business continuity.
Along with your employees, your good reputation is your most important asset. What are you doing to protect it and maintain its value? If you're not doing enough, you could be in danger of losing or having a tarnished reputation from which you may never recover. Look at these articles for some things you could be doing right now to maintain or improve your reputation.
