Business Continuity
Mark Holloway
Former Head of Change Management
at Co-operative Food
Business Continuity
What is Business Continuity Management
It is about identifying those parts of your business
that you can’t afford to lose.
Such as:
Information
Staff
Premises
And requires a business continuity plan of how you
can maintain these if an incident occurs
Business Continuity
Do we need a BCP?
1, 000s of businesses did after 9/11
Business Continuity
Half of all businesses
experiencing a disaster
with no effective plans for
recovery FAIL within the
following 12 months
Business Continuity
Any incident, large or small, whether it is natural,
accidental or deliberate, can cause major
disruption to your Masonic hall.
But if you plan now, rather than waiting for it to
happen, you will be able to get back to business in
the quickest possible time.
Delays could mean you lose valuable business to
your competitors, or that your customers lose
confidence in you.
Business Continuity
Business Continuity
Where to start?
1) Where is your business most vulnerable?
2) What would be worst incident for your business?
For both questions, think about your:
• Management and staff
• Customers
• Suppliers
• IT systems and processes
• Partnerships
• Buildings
• Timescales
Business Continuity
Business Continuity
Step 2 - Assess the Risks
What are the most likely and greatest risks to your
business?
Analyse the risk by asking yourself the following two
questions:
• How likely is it to happen?
• What effect will it have on the business?
Business Continuity
What is the worst that could happen?
What would be the worst thing for your business and
how likely is it to happen?
How would you cope with it?
Is there anything you can do to minimise the risk of it
happening?
Business Continuity
What might happen?
There is a fire and you are not able to use your hall for weeks
You are burgled and damage to your hall has taken place
There is a power failure that last for days
Your hall chairman is run over by a bus ……….. Etc.
Business Continuity
Business Continuity
Step 3. Develop your strategy
What to put in the plan?
Having analysed your business and assessed the risks
involved, you should now know which areas to focus
your plan on, be it an agreement with another hall to
share catering staff or having a caterer on 24 hour stand
by.
You will also know which type of potential incident
would hit your business worst and how to minimise the
damage that it could cause.
Business Continuity
You should now know whether you need to be fully
operational to survive, or whether it will be enough to
operate at 50%.
Do you know your break-even point? If not, it is very
important to work it out.
It might be better for you and your colleagues to close
the business down for a period of time and re-open fully
when the incident has passed. Or would it be better to
run the business through the incident so you don’t lose
your staff?
Are you committed to reducing risks or do you prefer to
take risks and have a comeback plan later?
Business Continuity
Business Continuity
When you have established what is important to the
survival of your business and what the risks are.
You are ready to write the plan.
Be sure to use non-technical language, making
it accessible and easy to understand by all.
Business Continuity
The number of plans and the content of these will vary from hall to
hall and should reflect the structure and culture of the hall and the
complexity of its critical activities.
Based on these factors, you may choose to have separate incident
management, business continuity and business recovery plans; or
separate plans covering a particular part of your business. For a
small hall a single plan which incorporates all the above elements
may be sufficient.
The key point to remember is that in totality the plans and
supplementing material should provide all the information your hall
needs to ensure that it can manage the immediate incident and
continue and recover the critical activities identified in your risk
assessment.
It is also important to ensure that your plans are easily accessible
and copies should be kept on and off site.
Business Continuity
Whatever type of plan you are writing, it is important to clearly
state its purpose and scope.
Any relationship to other relevant plans or documents should be
clearly referenced and the method of obtaining and accessing these
described.
You should document who owns the plan and who is responsible
for reviewing, amending and updating it at regular intervals.
A system of version control should also be adopted.
The plan should list all individuals with a role in its implementation
and explain what that role is.
Business Continuity
The method by which the plan is invoked should be clearly
documented, setting out the individuals who have the authority to
invoke the plan and under what circumstances.
The plan should also set out the process for mobilising and
standing down the relevant teams. (In doing this, you should
consider putting in place arrangements so that the relevant teams
are mobilised as early as possible when an incident occurs. Delay in
mobilising these teams could have a major impact on the
effectiveness of your BCM arrangements).
All plans should contain or provide a reference to the essential
contact details for all key stakeholders, including all those staff
involved in the implementation of the plan.
Business Continuity
You should document the tasks that will be required to manage the
initial phase of the incident and the individual responsible for each
task.
This is likely to include:
Site evacuation; mobilisation of safety, first-aid or evacuationassistance teams; locating and accounting for those who were on
site or in the immediate vicinity; and ongoing employee/customer
communications and safety briefings.
The plan should set out the arrangements for communicating with
staff, wider stakeholders and general public.
There should be an up to date contact list and the location and
method of obtaining it described in the plan.
Business Continuity
You should identify a robust location, room or space from which an
incident will be managed. Once established, this location should be
the focal point for the hall’s response.
An alternative meeting point at a different location should also be
nominated in case access to the primary location is denied. Each
location should have access to appropriate resources, such as
telecommunications, by which the incident team may initiate
effective incident management activities without delay. You should
also have your “emergency pack” on site.
Business continuity and recovery In terms of business continuity
and recovery, your plan should: set out the critical activities to be
recovered, the timescales in which they are to be recovered and
the recovery levels needed; the resources available at different
points in time to deliver your critical activities; the process for
mobilising these resources; and detailed actions and tasks needed
to ensure the continuity and recovery of your critical activities.
Business Continuity
Business Continuity
Rehearsal and Staff Training
Once the plan is developed, it needs to be tested.
How will you know whether you have omitted
something if you don’t test your plan?
Testing should be carried out in an environment to
reproduce authentic conditions.
Although it might not be practicable to change premises
for a few days, it might be a good idea to test your plan
at another hall with key staff for a few hours.
It is vital to test the plan with all the staff so that each
employee is fully aware of their role and responsibilities.
Business Continuity
WORKSHOP
Business Continuity
Workshop
Worst-case scenarios:
What is the worst case scenario?
What is the likelihood of this happening?
How can you cope with it?
What can you do to prevent it?
How much can you afford to lose if you are unable
to run your business for:
X days
X weeks
X months?
Business Continuity
Workshop
Worst-case scenarios:
What are the greatest risks to your business?
1. Loss of Caterer
2. Fire prevents use of Hall for 3 weeks
3. Sudden death of Hall chairman
Business Continuity
Workshop
Business Continuity
Workshop
List the services provided ,
or the things they do
Decide the number of days, weeks or
months you can do without the service
etc.
List the critical activities
required to deliver the
services or things they do
List as many as you can think of
Decide the Impact score
Business Continuity
Business Continuity
Workshop
Table 1, 4, 7 and 10 Plan for the loss of your Caterer
Table 2, 5, 8 and 11 Plan for Fire prevents use of Hall
for 3 weeks
Table 3, 6, 9 and 12 Plan for the sudden death of the
hall chairman
Business Continuity
Workshop
List the services provided ,
or the things they do
Decide the number of days, weeks or
months you can do without the service
etc.
List the critical activities
required to deliver the
services or things they do
List as many as you can think of
Decide the Impact score
Business Continuity
Workshop
Table 1, 4, 7 and 10 Plan for the loss of your Caterer
Table 2, 5, 8 and 11 Plan for Fire prevents use of Hall
for 3 weeks
Table 3, 6, 9 and 12 Plan for the sudden death of the
hall chairman
Business Continuity
Emergency
pack and
websites
Business Continuity
Emergency pack
Business Continuity
Useful Websites and documents
www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/guide-for-small-businesses.pdf
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/f
ile/137994/Business_Continuity_Managment_Toolkit.pdf
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Business-Continuity-Plan
BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN for Masonic Halls Final Edition
(Word Document issued at the Hall seminar in October 2011)
Business Continuity
Questions