- an updated business impact analysis
- exercises of the crisis management plan
- preparing articles, or a newsletter, for BCP personnel and executives in your organization analyzing recent disasters or crises to your organization, to another organization in the same industry, or to another organization in the same locale
- providing presentations on the recent incidents mentioned above. These presentations can be provided by you – or a member of another organization that experienced the incident
- contract with a high-profile consulting firm to participate and report the findings on exercises of your BCP, particularly the exercise for the crisis management plan.
Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
A few years ago, you performed a BIA on the business functions performed in all of your organizations business units (departments). This BIA analysis identified if there would be an impact on the organization if the business function was interrupted, the type of impact, when the impact would begin and how the impact would escalate over a period of time (hours, days, weeks, etc.).
What business functions are being performed in that business unit (department) today. What functions are new since the BIA was performed? What functions have been changed, or even eliminated? Has the business units’ plan been changed – to reflect the changes? Perhaps the BCP professional needs to perform a new BIA. Perhaps a new BIA would identify exposure in the BCP that need correcting, or updating. Executives should be made aware that the plan is fluid, it needs to adapt to the changes of the organization in order to be viable.
Crisis Management Plan (CMP)
How many of you have a documented crisis management plan? The CMP consists of documentation identifying the roles of the executive management team and the crisis management team.
The Executive Management Team - The core member of the executive management team is the chief executive officer, (CEO). The CEO will usually select as members of the EMT, the chief financial officer (CFO) and if you have one, the chief operations officer (COO).
The rest of the members could include one or more of the following executives: the chief legal counsel, the public relations executive, the human resources executive, and the chief information officer.
The EMT plan has documented responsibilities, and checklists that assist the members of the EMT with resource information to use in managing a crisis.
The Crisis Management Team - The core members of the crisis management team will include the heads of, or assigned representatives, for the following departments: facilities/buildings/property department, security department, public relations/media relations department, human resources/personnel department, legal department, insurance/risk management department, and the treasury/finance department.
After the CMP is activated, the responsibilities of the CMT will include:
- Taking charge quickly,
- Determining the facts,
- Telling your story and,
- Fixing the problem.
Similar to the EMT, the CMT plan has documented responsibilities, and checklists that assist the members of the CMT with resource information to use in managing a crisis. But this documentation is more detailed than that of the EMT. The resources for each member of the CMT must be reviewed with the member to insure that all details that would be needed during a crisis are identified and documented.
During the training exercises, the members have the opportunity to recognize they need to make changes to their responsibilities, and/or their checklists.
By having a CMP, and by exercising it, you can keep the executives of your organization aware of why they need to maintain the support for the overall BCP.
Oops, I ran out of space. In my next article, I will continue with the suggestions mentioned above.
"Appeared in DRJ's Winter 2007 Issue"
