Flexible contingency plans critical for business continuity

I’ve often talked in this blog about the need for both flexible and strategic thinking about the location and range of premises a business has.

The reasons regarding productivity, efficiency and taking advantage of technology to work at a range of sites all make good sense.

But the natural disasters from the Queensland floods, to the Christchurch earthquakes and Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear trifecta have given us another very stark reason for flexible locations.

When it comes to business continuity, every day an operation is shut down can become like a fatal wound. The faster most businesses can get up and running again after an interruption the better.

The interruption can be on a disastrous scale as we have seen, or it can be something more day to day; like road works blocking off a retail business for several weeks sending turnover to zero, or other unexpected interruptions such as power cuts or telecommunications issues.

A business continuity plan is critical, whether one is employing 5 people or 500.

To be ready requires a little thinking outside the square. For example, if your head office was shut down for some reason, do you have offsite server back ups? Could you run your business out of one of your branch offices, or your distribution warehouse? Could you quickly relocate your people to a back office in the suburbs or another town?

How well are you set up to operate from laptops and smart phones remotely? What if these smart tools were out of action?

There are tried and proven practical measures to develop these business continuity plans. These include working out the locations where staff live by postcode, and the distances they might have to travel to an alternative location, through to how much of your operation is accessible from multiple locations.

So there are so many reasons to have a Plan B and even a Plan C, and making sure these plans are workable.

Following the February 22nd earthquake in Christchurch, it is interesting to look at which businesses had done this work well.

The Warehouse had 5 stores in the Christchurch CBD, and 3 were up and running again 48 hours after the earthquake. OfficeMax and Westpac achieved similar results.

These organisations had a plan and then executed it, including quickly redeploying well-prepared staff to Christchurch to assist with keeping the ship running.

As we are all only too well aware, successful business is about dealing in certainty, and having a business continuity plan that can ensure this even in the face of disaster, is becoming increasingly critical.

We owe it to our organisations’ future and those of our staff and clients to have a plan for potential business interruptions.

Have you updated your plan recently?