When holidays roll around, or summer shines on the horizon, it is human nature to slack off a bit – as your mind begins its own slow descent into holiday mode.
Unfortunately, Business Continuity never takes a day off. Business Continuity Plans are dependent upon people – those critical team members with special skill sets, training and experience. While they may be on holiday, potential threats to your day-to-day business operations will not.
An earlier blog discussed the perils and pitfalls of relying on individuals within Business Continuity Plans. The holidays (and summer vacations) exacerbate that issue: the availability of individuals to respond to a business disruption.
Whether they’ve traveled to another city, country or continent – or have simply turned off their phone and laptop – there may be reasons individuals won’t (or can’t) respond to a business disruption during their holiday time. You can either resign yourself to that loss (and hope for the best), or do a little preparatory work to mitigate the risk of having a disaster – and having no one respond to it.
Have you got a BCM Awareness Program? Do you only publicize BCM during BCAW (Business Continuity Awareness Week)? The year-end holidays (and the start of summer) are perfect times to blow the dust off that Awareness Program!
- Remind Response Team members to advise their Team Leader of when they’ll be out, when they’ll be unavailable – and how they can be reached while away (if they can).
- Remind Team Leaders to review their Teams and, wherever possible, add members with similar skill sets. Those extra bodies may not have had the opportunity to exercise the plan, but an available ‘warm body’ with the proper background is better than nobody at all.
- Use the opportunity to update contact information for every responder (especially if you normal update cycle is annual – just before the next exercise or test). And don’t forget to make sure you’ve got valid contacts for those new ‘temporary’ team members.
- It can be difficult to get people to focus, but make sure all ongoing monitoring is covered by individuals with the knowledge to act. No one want’s to be the on call designee on New Year’s Eve, but that’s no excuse for substituting someone from development who knows nothing about operations – just because they don’t have ‘plans’.
- Make certain Security, Facilities and any other likely 1st responders are aware of any changes in procedures, protocols of personnel. Nothing worse than a Security desk which won’t acknowledge an alert because they don’t know the caller and assume it’s a crank call (it’s happened!). Make sure those 1st responders have updated contact information.
We all enjoy spending time away from the office (even if we don’t enjoy spending it with extended family members). Just don’t let the holiday spirit (or the lazy days of summer) punch holes in your Business Continuity capabilities. Take the time and make the effort to assure that all your planning and testing efforts don’t fall apart because of a holiday or vacation.
Disruptions and disasters don’t recognize your holiday schedule. Be prepared – even if preparedness means doing a little extra bit before the holidays begin. Don’t let the next holiday be your last – or your employer’s!
