A business continuity plan outlines directions and procedures that your company will follow when faced with a crisis. These plans include business procedures, names of assets and partners, human resource functions, and other helpful information that can help maintain your brand's relationships with relevant stakeholders. The goal of a business continuity plan is to handle anything from minor disruptions to full-blown threats.
When you think about business continuity in terms of the essential functions your business requires to operate, you can begin to mitigate and plan for specific risks within those functions.
Business continuity planning is the process of creating a plan to address a crisis. When writing out a business continuity plan, it's important to consider the variety of crises that could potentially affect the company and prepare a resolution for each.
A business continuity plan is important because regular operations will need to continue in the event of a crisis —and sometimes, especially during a crisis. Having a business continuity plan in case of each type of crisis will be helpful in maintaining your operations.
Business continuity management oversees a business's continuity plan and makes necessary changes to it when needed. This type of management determines the potential threats to a company and how each of these threats might impact business functions. Based on these findings, business continuity management is able to tweak the company's continuity plan to address any new potential hazards.
One responsibility that business continuity management teams have is planning for disaster recovery. Disaster recovery is a component of the business continuity plan that specifically focuses on product issues. In addition to that, business continuity management also includes crisis management, contingency planning, and emergency management.
1.Operational
Operational continuity means that the systems and processes your business relies on are able to continue functioning without disruption. As these processes are critical to business operations, it's important to have a plan in place in case disruption occurs so you can minimize the loss of revenue.
2. Technological
Organizations that rely on technology to run want to ensure the integrity and continuity of those systems. For example, while the functionality of Google Drive is not within your realm of control, there are many internal systems that you'll want to maintain and mitigate, like maybe having an offline file storage system to access important documents.
3. Economic
Economic continuity means that your business is still able to continue being profitable during possible disruptions. Every business has its ups and downs, so one thing you'll want to do is future-proof your organization for negative scenarios that can hit the bottom line.
4. Workforce
Workforce continuity means that you'll always have enough staff, and the right staff, to handle the work that comes through your doors, especially during times of crisis.
5. Safety
Workforce continuity goes beyond planning the right roles and staffing the right people to fill them. In order for them to show up every day and perform well, they must feel safe to do so. This involves creating a comfortable work environment, and ensuring that, even during a crisis, people have the tools they need to succeed and feel supported in the workplace.
6. Environmental
Environmental continuity means that your team is able to operate effectively and safely in their work environment. This can mean considering possible threats to your physical office or headquarters, and coming up with plans of action if these issues occur.
7. Security
You want your employees to be safe. You also want your employees and business assets to be secure as well. Security breaches can cause major harm to your operations, safety, and reputation. Continuity in this realm means prioritizing employee security and safety of important business information, and plans of action if the information were to become compromised.
8. Reputation
Customer satisfaction and a good reputation can fuel your flywheel and result in increased revenue. The flip side of this coin, however, is that a tarnished reputation can cause great harm.
Reputation continuity means continuously monitoring conversations about your brand or business, prioritizing customer satisfaction, and coming up with action plans for rectifying situations if your reputation is called into question