Monday Tip – Make Business Continuity Planning part of Business As Usual

Planning for the continuity of your business after a disaster should be part of your day job

Business As Usual is a term that is used to describe activities that form part of your normal day-to-day operations. This contrasts from those activities that change the way the business runs: such as enhancement projects, infrastructure upgrades, new product introductions etc. Business Continuity is often thought of as being a project that changes the way the business operates and thus is not Business As Usual. I would like to argue otherwise.

It is true that the early stages of introducing Business Continuity Planning into an organisation are usually managed by means of a project that produces the first iteration of “the plan”. After this however, the tempo changes. For Business continuity Management to be effective over the long term, the organisation needs to change its culture: the way it thinks and behaves. This is analogous to the changes in behaviour that are required when an organisation embraces Quality Management.

As in the case where an organisation has signed up to the ISO 9000 family of Quality Management standards; whenever a change is proposed to the way the business operates, there needs to be consideration of the impact of the proposed change. Not just the impact that is being planned for by making the change, but also any resulting impact on the ability of the business to continue operating after an incident.

Business Continuity Management is all about managing operational risk: the threats to which the business is exposed and which have the capacity to disrupt the businesses operations and thus affect its customers and wider stakeholders. Through the process of preparing the initial Business Continuity Plan, the business will have established a register of risks that could disrupt operations. Whenever a change is proposed to an operational process, the affect on the risk register should be considered. By making this change are we:

• introducing new risks that have the potential to cause disruption (e.g. new processes involving hazardous chemicals); in which case what do we need to do to manage those new risks;
• increasing or reducing the probability that a previously identified risk might occur;
• modifying the degree to which we have mitigated a known risk
• damaging our ability to continue operations when a known risk actualises (e.g. by closing down a location that had previously been designated as a disaster recovery location)

All of these, and other, factors need to be considered before making the proposed change, otherwise the organisation’s ability to continue in business following a disaster might be affected.

Summary

Business Continuity Planning is not a one-off activity for an organisation. To be effective over the long term, the process needs to be embedded into the culture of the organisation and become part of the way it does Business As Usual

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