Long breaks from work and disastrous weather conditions – not to mention, a global pandemic – have taught us the value of planning for business continuity in advance. While the pandemic may be behind us, the lessons learned should serve for years to come. With weather conditions getting increasingly out of hand, and the frequency of weather extremes becoming less and less predictable, businesses worldwide have tremendously suffered from travel restrictions and locked-out office resources. Sadly, unforeseen circumstances pose a risk to business continuity that many organizations are not able to manage sufficiently well.
What follows is a discussion of factors that lead to potential gaps in business continuity, and how to comprehensively deal with these.
Business Continuity during Holidays
Holidays are spread throughout the calendar, but in the US, end-of-year holidays always pack a special punch. Not only do they come in batches, but they are also the most anticipated of the lot. Many employees take time out to travel to meet with their families and relations during this time, while others relax at home and work remotely on occasion. In other words, holidays in this time of the year quickly turn into a vacation and no matter what the plans are, employees stay away from the office for an extended period of time. But this is not the same as staying off work. As recent times have proven, the need to put in remote work hours can make or break a company. Those that do not allow for this flexibility, lose out on vital workforce productivity. On the other hand, businesses that enable flexible working conditions, discover how effective productivity does not have to be tied to the office desk.
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With many businesses having to do with a severely short-stuffed workplace during the holidays, cutting out on remote working can prove pricey. But remote working, on its own, isn’t solution. There’s the undeniable fact that losses and thefts take on a whole other level during the holidays with more employees reporting theft and loss during this time of the year than any other time. These incidences are no doubt facilitated by in-transit working. Busy airports, change of flights, and congested cafeterias can all conspire against employees looking to stay agile while formally off from work. Those in the habit of using personal devices for office work are frequently affected by this and the loss of laptops and smartphones often mean the loss of data and access to vital business processes. More than reduced workforce productivity, data breaches lead to failure of mandatory compliance standards and turn out to be the single largest concern for most companies. Even when devices are recoverable and employees come back online in a jot, the risk of compromise cannot be overridden. Added to this is the lesser but no less inevitable hassle of setting employees up with replacement hardware in case losses are not retrievable.
When Disaster Strikes
Global pandemic scenarios aside, natural calamities are known to cause significant disruption to businesses. Everything from storms and tornadoes to forest fires and earthquakes, natural disasters are something every business must, in principle, be prepared to deal with. In the US, for instance, winter snowstorms frequently render offices inaccessible for days as it takes a good while for roads to open again. These seasonal occurrences can translate sudden interruption to business continuity unless employees have the means to work remotely. Weather events come in different sizes and even a moderate icefall during the night can leave roads closed in the morning. While these can take businesses by surprise, remote working can make sure employees remain productive even under unforeseen circumstances.
In reality, the term BCDR or Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery incorporates two aspects that may not always converge. For instance, business continuity may simply mean enabling employees to work remotely and stay productive even outside office. On the other hand, severe weather events such as an earthquake or a tornado can take out a server located on or off-premises. Server outage can negatively impact an entire business, with all work suddenly coming to a halt. In this case, a DR (Disaster Recovery) plan is needed with adequate redundancy to access business-critical data and applications.
Risk Measure to Disaster Mitigation
For most business, hoping for the best is just not an option. This is because, even a vague assessment of the consequences of business discontinuity is enough of a warning. It is true that interrupting events come unannounced; that is why, it is important to assess the risk of potential business interruption and make that assessment part of a mitigating strategy. The truth is, no business can survive an unforeseen discontinuity if not prepared well in advance.
Business interruptions come in varying shapes and sizes. One of the best ways to prepare for disruptions is by putting in place specific safeguards that deal with each area of potential disruption. One can start by imagining the consequences of just one employee sitting idle for a day and go up to cover such extended circumstances as unavailable customer service, project completion delays, big data losses, and major revenue loss. Naturally, each of these potential bottlenecks are not only inter-related but all of these, save for the last, can lead to revenue losses so substantial a business fails to recover from.
Comprehensive risk assessment comes from a clear-headed inspection of all potentially disruptive scenarios. Typically, these are absent workforce caused by holidays, adverse weather, seasonal illnesses or pandemics, loss of office-ware or personal devices, data compromise, server outage, vandalism and even fire. Listing the incidence of such events from past years can send a clear directive about the significance of each of these. This ‘real-life’ stock taking takes away the abstract part of planning and designing meaningful action toward each incident becomes fruitful.
Top comments (1)
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