Covid-19 risk management and business continuity plans

The need for risk management and business continuity plans is becoming more critical to firms as they adjust to the business disruptions caused by the coronavirus. Well, a virus can’t shut your company’s systems, operations or services down, but it can impact how a business functions, especially if people are quarantined at home or too sick to work or experience a network outage or other disruptions.

While it’s not usual for a country to face pandemics like Covid-19, or any other disasters – be it natural or manmade – if businesses are to be guaranteed continuity, they should ensure a smooth recovery process and steadiness of operations. It is critical that businesses do a risk assessment and develop a recovery of services strategy.

The key question, then, is: “How can an organization ensure that business processes will be minimally interrupted?”

How can businesses ensure staff safety, customer safety, data backup plans or recover lost data after a crisis? What safeguards and safety procedures can they implement for their employees to ensure continuity?

Businesses may also face other disruptions such as thunder strikes, network outages, revenue loss, data loss, security vulnerabilities and threats, and stifled productivity, to name a few. But then, we must note that several businesses will not recover from the lockdown, especially those that are not fully operating as of yet, such as schools, bars tour companies, among others. Nonetheless, this doesn’t have to happen when a proper business continuity plan is in place.

The business continuity plans should include emergency provisions for workers to operate remotely, and the support systems, which will require the company to invest money and time in ensuring a smooth recovery process following any type of natural or manmade disaster.

As a matter of continuity of business operations, businesses should implement remote access infrastructure that is capable of supporting the entire workforce (Wi-Fi devices and other gadgets). SMEs should ensure proper access to necessary resources at the office even when workers are working remotely.

There is need to keep employees online by offering them data, training, support allowances, and constantly communicating with them. As a matter of self-support, workers should also plan in advance for a major disaster by establishing a comfortable and quiet space to work from home (a dedicated office is optimal; routine, periodic testing of remote access). Indeed, all smart business managers must identify potential threats for their areas of expertise.

The business continuity plan may apply to any number of scenarios in which the business could be disrupted, from power outages, to employee strikes, to cyber-attacks on computer networks, then the most recent Covid-19. In addition to knowing the threats that could derail your operations, it’s important to walk through what will happen in the wake of such catastrophes.

If you are unprepared for this possibility, chances are you will end up paying the ransom in order to regain control of your business. As a matter of recovery planning, a technical team must be created. Whether you hire, say, an in-house risk management staff or you work with a third-party vendor, you are going to need a team in place that can bounce into action when disaster strikes.

This team could help to create your business continuity plan as well as implement it, should the need arise. In a nutshell, while rehearsing the business continuity plan, a solid plan will have to identify essential business functions and find ways to restore them in the event of a partial or complete shutdown.

The goal is to have minimal disruptions but continue the greater part of the business delivery lines with ease.