Benjamin Franklin famously said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” This is certainly true when it comes to emergency planning. The question people often ask after a catastrophic event or emergency is “What next?” This simple question has no simple answer, but a business continuity plan can help organizations successfully move forward after an emergency. In this article, I will answer common questions regarding what a business continuity plan is, how to create one, and how to make the most of it.
What Is a Business Continuity Plan?
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a document that outlines how an organization will continue operating during an unplanned disruption. Because the solutions are predefined, a BCP can help organizations respond to a variety of urgent needs, such as communication, system access, or even the location where work will take place in the event of a disruption. The BCP provides key individuals with detailed strategies for maintaining operations during both short-term and long-term disruptions.When should the local church or school develop a BCP? The answer is today or as soon as possible.
Why is it important? Have you thought about what would happen if your local church or school experienced an emergency?
An emergency situation can consist of a natural event, like a fire, flood, or tornado, but it could also consist of other scenarios, such as a power outage, bomb threat, or civil unrest. No matter the situation, you should review threats and devise a BCP to ensure operations can continue even when a threat becomes a reality. Your business continuity plan is meant to outline the potential impact of emergency situations, create policies to respond to them, and help your organization recover quickly. Good response plans help ensure appropriate actions are taken and can minimize the effects of any loss. The main goal of a BCP is to protect personnel and assets, both during and after an emergency.
Effective business continuity strategies will help provide the prompt return of operations by staff and volunteers. They will also enhance the organization’s ability to accomplish its mission.
Writing Your Business Continuity Plan
Each business continuity plan will vary significantly based on the size of the organization, the type of operation, and the specific circumstances. Churches and schools need to make the effort now for the best chance at survival after an unexpected event. Plans should be clear and concise. However, they should contain enough information to enable the team to respond effectively to the incident.When writing a BCP, there are a number of factors to consider:
SCALE – The maximum scale of incident that the plan is intended to cover. For example, a plan might say, “This plan is designed to enable the recovery of the activities undertaken in building X.” However, if you’re responding to the total loss of all the buildings on the site, an operational BCP designed to recover the activities from only one specific building would not be suitable for use.
ESCALATION – To whom the incident is escalated, if necessary. If the incident is outside the scope of the plan, it needs to be escalated to the site’s business continuity team.
PROCEDURES – Details of the actions to be taken and decisions to be made.
INFORMATION – The information necessary (without making the plan too large) to make decisions and take the necessary actions.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES – The roles and responsibilities of those using the plan.
5 Steps to Building a Business Continuity Plan
Step 1: Form the business continuity management team.Your church/school’s business continuity team is meant to implement and execute the plan. Whom you decide to include on this team is dependent upon the size of your location and how you intend to carry out the program. These individuals will prepare standards, train others, and identify processes to achieve the best responses to each emergency.
Step 2: Conduct a business impact analysis.
Understand the operational, financial, and physical risks to your location should there be a disruption. Once you have your list of potential risks, discuss how these risks could affect operations and what can be done to mitigate those risks if emergencies or disruptions are experienced.
Step 3: Identify gaps in resources.
Identify any discrepancies between the resources you have and those you still need. Consider emergency safety tools, communication mediums, and even resources needed for a shelter-in-place.
Step 4: Implement recovery strategies.
Identifying and analyzing your risk is very important, but knowing how to react and having a recovery plan in place is imperative. Once you have a plan, it is essential to implement it and educate everyone on-site about what to do in the event of certain emergencies. During this step, you should also verify and update floor plans, individual phone numbers, and records of assets and data.
Step 5: Practice and improve.
As a last and ongoing step, it’s always a great idea to test your business continuity plan to make sure it is effective and to make recommendations for improvement. That way, you can make sure your plan is up-to-date and ready to handle unexpected changes.
The Who, What, When, Where, and How of a BCP
WHEN? – When should the plan be activated and under what circumstances (severity of incident)? For example, the plan should be activated if the building becomes inhabitable for a set amount of time. This “waiting period” will vary depending on the type of business and its complexities, as outlined in the BCP. For a church, it could be a fire incident, the outbreak of a pandemic, a national economic catastrophe, or any incident that would hinder the church’s ability to meet and continue ministries.WHERE? – Is the church/school inaccessible? If so, where is your disaster recovery site? For example, would the local church rent another building after an incident? Has the church leadership scouted potential locations to accommodate the congregation? Would the church be meeting virtually using an online platform? How about schools? Would your school be able to quickly move to a different location and accommodate all teachers and students? If the school has more than 100 students, there may not be enough rental buildings in the area that could accommodate everyone. Proactive research and proper planning becomes an important part in developing the BCP for your school or church.
WHO? – Who needs to be contacted? The media, staff, customers, suppliers? Is there anyone who needs specific consideration in the plan, such as contractors, on-site childcare providers, or counselors for the staff? For example, if a local church has a food bank ministry, and the church receives truck deliveries every week, the truck company should be part of the BCP to ensure they are notified of the new location or change of operation. Similarly, if a school has rooms rented to staff counselors or if contractors are remodeling the bathrooms, a notification should be sent to all of these affected parties.
WHAT? – What equipment and communication will be required? Equipment and technology play an important role in church ministries and schools. As you consider possible incidents and circumstances, it is important to plan ahead and determine what equipment will be necessary to ensure that communication continues to be effective and efficient.
HOW? – How will the team contact staff, liaise with emergency services, contact the media, and engage recovery activities? For example, in case of a sexual abuse scandal at the church/school, who will be responsible for handling the communication and overseeing any media content? It is strongly recommended that local churches and schools work closely with their conference administration and the conference’s legal counsel, closely referring to the conference’s crisis communication plan.
Exercising the Plan
Once the BCP is completed and ready to implement, it is important to run a simulation exercise and practice the plan. Here are the steps to running the BCP exercise:- Set objectives based on potential incidents. Meet with your church/school board leaders and discuss potential incidents that can have an impact on the daily/weekly operation. Agree to the scope, aims, objectives, and expected outcomes.
- Identify your team. Identify the planning team and key individuals who will exercise the plan.
- Design the exercise. Plan and design the exercise, including setting a budget and—when appropriate—conducting a risk assessment to identify the risks of impact on live operations.
- Run the exercise. Go through the steps necessary to carry out the exercise. This is just like practicing a fire drill with your church or school, but, in this case, you will need to also practice the business continuity portion of a fire incident.
- Debrief. Assess and report the outcome, including a debrief with the participants immediately after the exercise.
- Follow up. Address any issues raised by the exercise.
Final Words
Preparation and planning are two key elements for any successful risk management strategy. As church/school leaders, you have a God-given opportunity to care for the people and assets entrusted to you. Adventist Risk Management looks forward to working with conferences, local churches, and schools to assist your organization in the development of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP).Image credits: doomu-stock.adobe.com
