A strong business continuity plan includes more than just IT recovery. A well designed plan touches nearly every aspect of your business.
Here are six areas to add to IT in your business continuity plan:
- Emergency management. Basic emergency management is a critical part of any business continuity plan. Personnel need to be ready for all kinds of situations like fires, natural disasters, lock downs and medical emergencies. Make sure employees have access to procedures and know who is in charge in case something should happen.
- Facilities management. Places like the office, warehouses, factories and storefronts are all susceptible to fire, natural disaster and other physical threats. Through proper planning, these facilities can be designed to withstand or recover quickly, minimizing downtime.
- Mass absentee planning. Can your business survive if a large number of employees don't come to work? That could happen if there's a natural disaster, union dispute or widespread illness. These possibilities represent a serious threat to business and plans need to be in place for the continuation of critical business functions.
- Supply chain management. Every point along your supply chain has vulnerabilities, some of which are specific to each individual part of the chain. Your business continuity plan should have contingencies in place in case something happens.
- Health and safety. Beyond other business functions, the health and safety of employees and consumers is incredibly important. Systems need to be in place to protect against security threats, illness outbreaks, environmental hazards or any other potential personnel threat.
- Knowledge management. If executives or other critical employees suddenly become unavailable due to medical emergencies or another cause, others need to have access to their information that is necessary for continued business operations.
Proper continuity planning is a big job that requires a lot of time and resources, and business continuity consultants can help create a cohesive plan to help in any possible scenario.