While most organizations now have at least a rudimentary business continuity plan in place, the last year has left many of them wondering whether any plan will be able to properly protect them against an increasingly complex set of possible threats. Instead of being able to turn to their plan to ensure smooth operations, companies found either gaps, with roughly half of organizations lacking considerations for a global emergency, or failures to consider the possible effects of layered disasters.
Within the current environment, business continuity plans need to be examined in a new light, considering the shift from disaster recovery to resiliency. Says Professor David Denyer, director of research for the school of management at Cranfield University, to Raconteur, “Resiliency is so crucial because it encompasses more than just business continuity crises. It includes incident management, disaster recovery, risk management and all those other functions.” Companies need to instead look deeply into their known risks, and consider how to best prepare for their occurrence. “Resiliency shifts the thinking from the recovery of an asset to the delivery of essential service outcomes. We may find in a severe crisis that a site cannot be recovered, but we can find an alternative way of delivering the essential service to our end-user,” says Denyer.
The evaluation of these risks is best handled by a cross-functional team, taking in insights from members throughout the organization to determine both potential threats and responses. Says Dr. Lee Miles, professor of crisis and disaster management at Bournemouth University, “Plans are guidelines, skeleton structures in which to give people advice about how they should do things. But it’s the people that fill in the gaps.”
Source:
https://www.raconteur.net/business-strategy/risk/business-continuity-failings/
