As part of an organization’s risk management plan, it has a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). The risks include everything that could affect the company’s normal operations, such as a natural disaster. This article entails some important issues, like having a checklist for a business continuity plan and having a template with an example in the UK.
Business Continuity Plan
To ensure a company’s ability to function in the case of a natural disaster or cyberattack, business continuity planning (BCP) is necessary. When a disaster occurs, it is aimed at protecting employees and assets and ensuring that they can function immediately. In other words, business continuity plans should be put to the test to see if any flaws can be found and fixed.
Natural disasters, such as fire, flood, or weather-related events, and cyberattacks are some of the risks. As soon as the risks are known, the plan should also include these things:
- figuring out how those risks will affect the way things work.
- Make sure there are safeguards and procedures in place to reduce the risks
- Tests are done to make sure that procedures work.
- Make sure that the process is up-to-date.
BCPs are crucial for any company. There will be less money coming in and more money going out because of threats and disruptions. Businesses can’t just rely on insurance because it doesn’t cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition. It is usually planned out in advance and has input from important people and stakeholders.
Note: The important thing to remember is that BCP may not work as well if a lot of people get sick, like when there is a disease outbreak.
Developing a Business Continuity Plan
There are a lot of steps that many businesses have to take to make sure their BCP is strong. They also have:
- Business Impact Analysis: Here, the business will figure out which functions and resources need to be done quickly.
- Recovery: In this part, the business must figure out how to get back to important business functions.
- Organization: A team must be set up to deal with emergencies. This group will come up with a way to deal with the disruption.
- Training: It’s important for the continuity team to be trained and tested. They should also do exercises that go over the plan and strategies.
Business Continuity Impact Analysis
An important part of making a BCP is figuring out how a business continuity plan will affect your business. It shows how business functions and processes can be affected when they are interrupted. It also uses the information to make decisions about where to start and how to do it.
FEMA has an operational and financial impact worksheet that you can use to run a business continuity analysis. People in charge of business functions and processes should fill out this worksheet. They should know the business well. These worksheets will help you remember the following:
- When a business function or process is lost, it can have both financial and operational consequences.
- Making sure that the loss of a function or process would have the business effects that were identified
Doing the analysis can help businesses find and prioritize the tasks that have the most impact on the business’s financial and operational functions after they’ve been done. The point at which they need to be recovered is called the “recovery time goal.”
Why Is Business Continuity Planning (BCP) Important?
It is important for any business to have a plan in place in the event of a disaster, no matter how big or small. BCP is usually meant to help a company keep going even if there are threats and problems with the way things work. This could lead to a loss of revenue and more money spent, which could make the company less profitable.
What Should a Business Continuity Planning (BCP) Include?
Business continuity planning is the process of figuring out all the things that could go wrong with the company’s work. The plan should also figure out how the risks will affect operations and come up with safeguards and procedures to protect against them. There should also be testing procedures to make sure that these safeguards and procedures work. Also, they should be done often. Finally, there should be a review process to make sure the plan is still correct.
However, here is the 4 P’s that you should think about when making a business continuity plan people (staff and customers), processes (technology and processes), premises and providers, suppliers, and partners. This method lets you think about business continuity from a wider perspective than just technology, not just from a single point of view.
Now, let us see a template showing how a business continuity plan is done in the UK.
Business Continuity Plan Template UK
A business continuity plan is a written document that outlines how a company will function in the event of an emergency.
This template shows you how to make a business continuity plan measured in the UK. It makes it easy and comprehensive to write down the steps that make up your own BCP. Template: Use this one to plan each step of a typical BCP, analysis of the business impact and plans for recovery as well as the development of the plan. This Template can be used as a general framework for your bigger Business Continuity Plan in th UK.
Business Continuity Plan Example
According to government statistics, more than a tenth of UK firms fail each year. While cash flow troubles are typically to blame, other businesses fail because they are unable to recover from an unexpected incident that completely devastates their operations. A pandemic, a building fire, a flood, a burglary, a serious act of vandalism, or arson are examples of such events.
According to government estimates, 43% of UK businesses have experienced a cyber breach or attack, which can be deadly. Customer or employee fraud threatens the viability of some UK businesses. While others must deal with the consequences of breaching the law or legal action taken by clients for alleged negligence. Few things are more terrible than workplace death, and terrorist acts have also had an impact on many others.
There are times when events aren’t as dramatic but still important. Losing a big customer or someone going broke and not paying their bill are examples of things that could happen. People who are important to the business can leave or become seriously ill at the last minute. A main supplier can suddenly go out of business.
Technical problems can also lead to the loss of important business data that hasn’t been backed up and stored somewhere else. Businesses also need to think about power outages, not being able to use the phone or the internet, and major problems caused by bad weather. Lastly, when disaster strikes, having a well-prepared business continuity strategy can make all the difference in whether or not your company survives or fails.
Business Continuity Plan Checklist
Emergency response leaders and key stakeholders need a business continuity plan to know what to do, who to call, how to respond, and procedures that should be performed when faced with a business-critical event. To put it another way, an effective business continuity plan serves as a study guide for all possible disaster scenarios.
Why You Need a Business Continuity Plan Checklist
Everything from a power loss and unplanned downtime to natural disasters and public health emergencies like the pandemic should be included in a comprehensive disaster recovery plan for businesses. Depending on the size, industry, and level of complexity of your organization, the specifics of your plan may differ. When designing a business continuity strategy, these are things to keep in mind.
There are processes that need to be followed before, during, and after each of these situations to keep business as usual as close as possible. A BCP (Business Continuity Plan) checklist covers these procedures in detail. Using this checklist, your response teams will be better equipped to carry out their plans step-by-step and without missing any important aspects. Which will help increase organizational readiness.
What Your Business Continuity Plan Checklist Should Include
A good business continuity plan checklist is all about knowing what could happen to an organisation, so this is the first thing you should think about when making one. The 5 ways below are how to start making a checklist for your group.
#1. Analyze all of your possible threats.
” You may not be able to predict which threats will affect your locations and assets, but you can do a business threat assessment to make sure that you will be ready for threats when they do happen.”
- People impact: What would happen to your employees if they couldn’t do their jobs? People and jobs are important for your company to be able to keep delivering goods and services to customers.
- Partner impact: How important are partners and service providers to your business? You might lose money if your partner’s business isn’t running smoothly.
- Facility impact: There are a lot of things that could happen at one or more of your worksites that could make them inaccessible. If a site or part of the country goes down, what is your backup plan?
- Technology impact: What systems or tools are used to make goods and services available to customers, and how? What systems are used to communicate and coordinate inside the company?
- Brand/Reputation impact: People will think less of your business if it can’t run normally. What should you do to make sure your customers don’t have bad feelings about your business for a long time?
When you do a business threat assessment, you think about everything that could happen, both outside and inside your company. This gives you a plan for how to put your organization in the best possible position; to deal with any threats that come your way.
#2. Define roles and responsibilities
A chain of command should be set up so that everyone can figure out who to go to when they need to make a big decision. Besides the crisis team, including internal communications, IT, and any executives; who might need to communicate important information to employees and other people who might be interested in the company. Don’t forget to list secondary contacts in case your main stakeholders aren’t around.
#3. Ensure emergency contact information is accurate
If there is a threat, ensure to have contact with the police and any other groups that could help you. An emergency communication system that can work with your HR system can also help. Hence, make sure this information is always up-to-date and correct.
#4. Assign a recovery team
A recovery team should have people who are in charge of organizing, communicating; and managing employees and other people during an emergency or business interruption. In addition, the recovery team will be in charge of actually getting the business back up and running again; like setting up a new site, communicating with system vendors, and changing plans as more information comes in.
#5. Have a backup plan
Most businesses today use computers to do their daily work, so a loss of those computers could be devastating. So, make sure to back up all of your computer systems on a regular basis; and make copies of important information either to a remote location or to a server. Keep track of how to get to it after you back it up. Other things to think about include:
Business Continuity Plan Template FAQ
How do you write a business continuity plan?
Natural disasters, such as fire, flood, or weather-related events, and cyber-attacks, are some of the risks. As soon as the risks are known, the plan should also include these things:
- figuring out how those risks will affect the way things work.
- Make sure there are safeguards and procedures in place to reduce the risks
- Tests are done to make sure that procedures work.
- Make sure that the process is up to date.
What are the four P's of business continuity planning?
However, here is the 4 P’s that you should think about when making a business continuity plan are people (staff and customers), processes (technology and processes), premises and providers, suppliers, and partners. This method lets you think about business continuity from a wider perspective than just technology, not just from a single point of view.
