Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is something we’d like to discuss as we close out the year and look into the future of next year.

Having an effective and well documented Business Continuity Plan is very important to your organization. We have heard time and time again that organizations do have a BCP, but it is either not written down or not tested on a regular basis. In fact, we’d challenge you to show us where your BCP lives within your organization – do you know where it is? Your BCP should be an active document that is reviewed at least once a year and tested twice a year to ensure everyone understands and knows the plan.

No matter if you have a BCP written or have one communicated but not written down, take a moment to ask yourself these questions about your plan:

• Operational: what systems and processes are in place to ensure that your organization can continue working in the event of a crisis?
• Technological: what systems need to be running or brought back up for your team to continue working offsite or at the office?
• Economical: if you lose power, do you have a way to bring your necessary applications back up so you can continue running at a profitable level?
• Safety: if there is an emergency in your building, who is in charge of ensuring everyone gets to a safe location?
• Security: what is your plan in the event there is a security breach?

Another important piece in your BCP is to assign specific people roles so that everyone in your organization knows who to go to during a time of a crisis. An effective BCP will have a team leader and a backup team leader for employees to go to. Some examples of roles you may consider at your organization are:

• Emergency Response Lead primary and secondary
• Human Resources Lead primary and secondary
• Communications Lead primary and secondary
• Administrative Lead primary and secondary

We encourage you to ask your team when the last time was they reviewed their BCP and tested it. If you do not have a BCP written down, we would encourage you to make it a priority for 2022.

If you need a template to start for a BCP, we have provided one that you can use here: BCP Template. We are also able to plan a small project if you would like us to assist with creating a BCP from ground up for your organization, just contact us to get started!