Business continuity
Many health and safety practitioners have over recent years seen
their role expanded to include Risk Management and Corporate
Governance functions. In many businesses
these responsibilities have been expanded to
include insurance company relationship management
and Business Continuity Management Planning.
Business Continuity Management
Business Continuity Planning is a pre-planned response to an
untoward event enabling a business to recover operations as
effectively as possible. An untoward event is for
example a fire or flood, which prevents the business from
functioning in its normal way.
Why do food and drink business need a Business Continuity
Plan?
The benefits of a Business Continuity Plan include:
- Managing the consequences of an incident - The crisis plan
- Maintaining customer service and confidence
- Preventing long term damage to the prospects of the
business. National audit office statistics indicate that 80%
of businesses that suffer a major event such as a fire go out of
existence within 2 years
- Providing a business with a clearly defined course of
action in the event of a major interruption to the company’s
trading activities
- Providing orderly and timely recovery of business
functions
- Reducing the number of decisions to be made after the
event
- Identifying personnel, resources and functions necessary for
business continuity
- Identifying systems critical to business continuity and define
alternate procedures for ongoing support
- Identifying additional short-term resources required for
critical business functions until a near normal service can be
established at alternative premises
- Providing an agreed recovery plan to ensure that business
continuity can be achieved at alternative premises
- Identifying the resources required
- Specifying the steps necessary to relocate business
functions
- Identifying those that must be notified of the disaster and
kept informed of recovery progress
- Managing client relationships during a period of business
interruption
- Documenting the location of back up critical data – electronic
and paper in off-site storage facilities.
Format of Business Continuity Plan
Any Business Continuity Plan developed should aim
to provide a framework for recovery that it is achievable,
testable and cost-effective. Any plan developed should
also be flexible and easily developed to reflect individual
organisational needs.
Whilst a plan will not be a solution to a crisis
it will help anticipate the steps to be taken to help recover
business processes in the event of a disaster striking.
It should provide:
- Options
- Procedures
- Plans
- Agreements
- Phone numbers and other information.
The final reference work developed will reflect the size and
nature of the business. Where sub-plans for individual
departments are required then these will need a co-ordinating “top
plan” to prevent conflicts of interest and the misuse of company
resources.
It is recommended the plan is:
- Developed and populated with critical key information
- Maintained and kept up to date
- Developed to reflect individual needs
For further information on Business Continuity Planning,
Refer:
Food & Drink Group Resource
Networking event presentations:
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