Seven Key Steps in Planning
Seven steps towards business continuity and organisational resilience
When your organisation is facing a crisis, there are a number of common questions and actions that should be considered, regardless of the type of incident. The following flow chart and steps detail the processes an organisation might take in developing a business continuity plan and organisational resilience.
Step 1 - Understand your organisation’s business
- Identify your key business activities/services and rank them in order of importance
- Importance should be assessed in terms of ability to meet your organisation’s objectives
- The importance of activities may differ at various times during the year
- Distinguish between essential and non-essential activities/services
- Identify individuals who deliver essential activities/services.
Step 2 - What are the risks to your organisation?
- Consider the things that might impact on your organisation’s ability to meet its objectives
(e.g. pandemic influenza, fire, flood, storms, product recall, sabotage, terrorism, explosion, vehicle accident, etc.) - How likely is it that these risks will occur?
- What impacts will the risk events have on your organisation, if they do occur?
- Will they also affect others in the community – your suppliers, your customers/clients, other community organisations?
- If so who will be affected and how?
Step 3 - What actions can you take to reduce the risk or its impact before it occurs?
- Can you control the risk?
- Can you put arrangements in place to reduce the impact, even if the risk event does occur
(e.g. if the risk is fire, you could store all key documents in a fire proof safe)? - What level of risk are you willing to accept?
Step 4 - What response actions can you take if the risk occurs?
- How would you respond immediately?
- What would you need to do within the first day, week, or month?
- Who is responsible for which key tasks?
- What activities could you put on hold?
- Could you gain assistance from other community organisations or could you help them?
Step 5 - Prepare and implement an action plan
- Prepare for all the actions you identified in Step 4
- Document your plan and procedures to ensure those employees available know what to do
- Use checklists and quick reference guides, and have these handy, if needed (at home and at work)
- Set up teams and list their responsibilities
- Your action plan will help you test your arrangements.
Step 6 - Tell your staff and customers/clients about your plan
- Communicate your plan to staff and volunteers and others who would benefit from knowing
- Share your plan with other community organisations.
Step 7 - Test and review your plan
- Review your environment to see if there are any new risks or if there are any new ways to reduce the impact of existing risks (e.g. new software developed to protect your IT system)
- Have your organisation’s key activities changed?
- Testing your plan will help identify if you have overlooked anything in your planning. It will also let you know if your action plan is practical and will help ensure your employees are aware of what they need to do.