If you have read some of our earlier ‘To the point’ then you will have seen that we have belted on before about the need to have robust disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place as you never know when the unexpected strikes. Well, who had the total shut down of UK and some European airspace on their radar? Some of you at least should have done as a result of the bad weather at Christmas time. This could have been seen as a useful precursor from which some valuable insights may have been gained to serve you well for the basis of an action plan for now.

Why in this introduction have we mentioned disaster recovery and business continuity separately? Well the two are distinctly separate and require different approaches.

Disaster Recovery plans traditionally focus on either recovering the business IT system and /or data or dealing with the loss of premises and the associated disruption.

Business Continuity Planning will address all the requirements essential to keeping the business running and includes processes to keep disruption to customers and employees to a minimum. In short, it is about ensuring that a crisis is managed effectively before it escalates to a disaster.

We do not propose to dwell on the steps taken to produce an effective continuity plan, but would suggest that as the week is beginning to unfold there is going to be a lot of uncertainty as no one knows for sure when the UK will start flying again let alone catching up with the backlog and it is this uncertainty that everyone will find hard to deal with. So what can you do to minimise the damage uncertainty brings?

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Brief all your employees on what is happening and what you are doing / trying to do about it. Make sure your employees UNDERSTAND the brief.

Have someone who is responsible for co-ordinating the difficult or unforeseen questions that inevitably get asked. They then elicit answers from the senior team and then BRIEF these back down the line. This way you ensure a united front.

By now your telephone lines will be humming if not jammed with employees and customers’ trying to find out what is happening. Take resource off non essential work and set up a section purely to deal with telephone enquiries. There is nothing worse than people not being able to get through to talk in a reasonably quick time.

UPDATE your website!!! State the date and time of the update and when you would envisage updating again in the future. The number of organisations that have outdated information is simply unbelievable! If you cannot get through on the telephone then the website is a good alternative that people try.

If you have a ‘contact us’ page then make sure the people resource is there to reply to these expeditiously.
Make sure your external PR is good. This disruption is very newsworthy so if you are canny you can use it to your advantage. Issue a statement to the press about how you are planning to cope and what you are doing for your customers. Good, free advertising if they print it. What you don’t want is to be on the back foot if the press get wind of a ‘good story’ from unhappy customers.
Willie Walsh on the front page of the Times flying into the ash cloud himself to have a look. Great PR. Upset, tearful customers in Airport Lounges complaining that conditions are poor and that no one wants them. Poor PR.

Take the initiative and make sure you contact all your customers and suppliers by telephone to let them know what is happening. Tell them the truth if you cannot supply them. People like to know where they stand so they can make alternative arrangements. Help them to find alternative suppliers. Sounds dangerous, you say? Not in the least! Now is the time you need to help them and they will appreciate it, their loyalty will make sure they come back. Don’t make promises to help them and then let them down. Trust us, this is much, much worse than saying no in the first place. Remember this, ‘If it is not in your hand to give, then don’t promise it.’

For those employees who are stuck abroad you need to produce a policy setting out your stance on the issue of unavoidable absence. You have a limited number of options, but remember you cannot ‘do them a favour’ unless you offer the same favour to everyone else!

Remember to keep your Stakeholders informed too. The Bank is worth keeping up to date, particularly if it is going to stretch cash flow in the short term. Get arrangements in place early for additional funding.

There is at least a silver lining to all this. You are not alone. It has been well publicised. If you play your cards right it will be a benefit to you in the longer term.

We can be of assistance in the following…..
Implementing a business continuity plan – even now it is not too late!
Reviewing you Contingency and Continuity planning for the future
Organising exercises to realistically test and review the robustness of your planning
HR advice to help frame a policy statement.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.