What is Business Continuity:
Business Continuity made simple
Business Continuity is all about having common sense precautions in place to help your business survive a disruption and recover afterwards.
A business continuity plan is simply a document containing the contingency measures to keep your business running.
Some of the key benefits business continuity could bring:
- Showing customers and suppliers you are serious about the resilience of your business
- Increasing your company’s reputation
- Providing assurance and protection to your staff
- Being more confident about the decision you make in a crisis
Business Continuity Instant:
The fast track to a Business Continuity Plan
Writing a Business Continuity Plan doesn’t need to take months or even weeks. By using our ‘5 Minute’ Business Continuity templates you could have a working plan in a couple of hours.
‘Five minute’ plan
Broadly speaking, the consequences of a disruption tend to be quite similar regardless of the cause. With this in mind having a generic plan which deals with as many outcomes as possible is ideal. The ‘five minute’ plan will make you think about the most important things you need to keep your business running day to day and asks what you can do to increase the resilience of your business.
Five minute business continuity plan
Putting together an ‘office grab bag’
Often a consequence of an emergency will be that you’ll have to evacuate your premises or office most often with little warning and at short notice. It makes sense to have what we call an ‘office grab bag’ in which you can place a copy of all the essential items you’d need to run your business. It can then be stored securely and in a place easily accessible so that in the event of incident it can be quickly grabbed. Our ‘five minute’ grab flyer will give you an idea of what to place in your office grab bag.
Five minute office grab bag flyer
How resilient are your suppliers?
All businesses rely on suppliers and other organisations to keep functioning. The majority have business continuity plans in place, if they don’t are you willing to accept the risk of not receiving a vital delivery or service. We suggest that you find out how resilient your suppliers are and we’ve put together a checklist of questions to ask your suppliers.
Five minute supplier checklist
Crisis Management
Should the worst happen and your business is affected by a disruption, spending five minutes thinking about how you’ll manage the situation now will mean that when disruption strikes, your business will be able to cope much better then if you hadn’t. Crisis Management isn’t complex; it’s simply identifying the people who’ll take charge, the documentation and equipment they’ll need and a location for them to work from. For a small business it may just be the one person. To help we have put together a ‘five minute’ crisis management plan for you to complete.
Recovering from a disruption
Recovery can often be a slow process but it doesn’t need to be. Having a logical, structured approach and the right information early, key decisions can be made quickly to aid your business recovery. We have put together a simple analysis form so that you can identify any problems which may impact on your business.
Business Continuity Lite:
Making Business Continuity simpler
Writing a Business Continuity Plan can often seem complex and daunting. If you are a small/medium enterprise following our Business Continuity brochure is an ideal way for you to put together your first business continuity plan.
Let’s get ready business continuity brochure
Below are some of the main aspects to think about when putting together a business continuity plan.
What are your critical products and services?
If something unexpected happens to your business it has the potential to disrupt your workforce, workspace, technology, information, equipment and suppliers. You won’t have the resources needed to keep things running at a normal level so you will need to suspend some activities and focus on the ones that are absolutely critical to the survival of your business.
What are your plan B’s?
Businesses often have aspects which when taken away could seriously affect their day to day running and during a disruption possibly cause the business to fail. By implementing some simple cost affective contingency measures you can mitigate the effects of a disruption and keep your business open.
Crisis management
Crisis management is basically day to day management but at a faster tempo, larger scale and possibly at an unusual hour. Taking time in advance to identify the people, documentation/equipment and location needed before a disruption will improve your business’s response to the disruption.
Be aware of the risks
There are a lot of events that could potentially disrupt the normal working of your business. You can find out more about the risks in the area by downloading the Humber Community Risk Register.
Humber Community Risk Register
Have you thought about insurance?
Insurance goes hand in hand with business continuity. It can provide essential cover in the event of something going wrong. The Association of British Insurers produces a booklet summarising the cover available and it’s a good idea to ask a broker for advice on what’s right for you.
Business Continuity Pro:
Ask the experts
If you are a large business looking to produce a tailored business continuity plan please get in touch. We have an excellent range of ‘Pro’ business continuity resources which we can use to produce a plan specific to your individual enterprise.