Business continuity in the community

We can help you think about how your business or organisation could survive an unexpected interruption to normal activities, which is also known as Business Continuity Management (BCM). Some events are of course beyond our control, but we do have the ability and opportunity to lessen the impact.

Examples of major incidents

• Traffic accidents
• Severe weather (heat/cold/snow etc.)
• Flooding
• Pandemic influenza
• Suspect packages/explosive devices
• Oil/chemical/diesel spills
• Fuel supply disruption
• Evacuation of people from their homes

Consider the following things when you start to think about business continuity.

Risk identification and evaluation

Identify the threats facing your business or organisation and the risk posed by each. You also need to understand who and what your business relies on and your key supply chains.

Think about whether your business could survive any of the following scenarios.

• Unavailable premises for a day, a week or longer
• No computers or telephones for an hour, a day, a week or a month
• Paper and computer records lost in a fire or flood
• A quarter of staff absent through sickness

Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Produce a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) which will assess how resilient your business or organisation is when it is disrupted due to extreme weather conditions, IT failure or power loss, to name a few examples. And also check that your plan actually works by testing it out with a pretend emergency scenario. 

Your BCP needs to be concise, simple and built into your day-to-day activities.

What a BCP should cover

• Includes Business Impact Analysis (BIA) - identifies your key products and services, the critical activities required to deliver them, the impact that a disruption of these activities would have on your organisation, and the resources required to resume the activities
• Risk assessment
• Protecting your resources
• Developing and implementing a response

Reviewing and training

Continually review your BCP plan in light of changing circumstances and experience, as well as train staff on working in emergency situations. 

Outcomes of effective BCM

Prepare your business for an emergency to ensure the following outcomes:

• Protected assets, products and services
• Protected reputation
• Secured supply chain 
• Developed incident management capability provides an effective response
• Trained staff respond effectively during an emergency
• Stakeholder requirements understood and met
• Staff and stakeholders receive enough support and communications during an emergency
• Relationships with other departments and organisations including local authorities and the emergency services properly developed, documented and understood

Ask us for further help or advice

We can help you tailor the business continuity process to meet your business or organisation's needs, or just offer some free advice. Call us 01225 47 70 43 or email One_west@bathnes.gov.uk