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Staff
Producing the Plan
When producing a plan it is good practice to involve your staff. Their knowledge and experience of your business will be invaluable in the preparation, production and testing of your Business Continuity Plan.
To promote preparedness within the workforce by ensuring that your staff understand Business Continuity Planning principles and that they are committed to these principles. Include Business Continuity Planning information in your staff newsletters and ensure that you have developed an employee profile to maximise the flexibility, experience and ability your employees have to undertake other duties.
Communicate
When introducing Business Continuity Planning within your organisation ensure that a two-way mechanism exists to provide information to staff but also receive information from them. After all, they will provide a different perspective on the issues which need to be included within your Business Continuity Plan.
Call out Tree
Make sure that you have a list of employees contact details so that staff can be contacted during and out side office hours. This will need to be kept up to date as staff turn over and contact numbers change regularly these days compared to the past.
Designated Phone Number
Consider developing an “out of town” phone number where employees can leave a message regarding their availability to work. This can be a simple ‘ I’m okay’ message to a fuller explanation regarding their health and wellbeing. This is a different method of communication from employees being told the position by their company compared to proactively notifying their company of their availability to work.
Organisation Tree
Ensure that you have a diagram showing how your organisation is managed and who has specific responsibility for communications with staff during a major incident. This will also aid employees to know how the company will be led during a major incident.
Special Needs Staff
It is extremely important that you talk to your co-workers with disabilities. They will provide help and information on how your plan can be developed to take special account of their needs during a major incident. By involving people with disabilities in Emergency Planning and Business Continuity Planning, you will be able to build into your plan any problems with
- physical limitations
- equipment
- medication and
- any particular special instructions that are needed to be provided.
It is always worth identifying people willing to help co-workers with disabilities and ensure that they are able to handle the job. This is particularly important if staff require lifting or special handling methods. Ensure that you know how to alert people that cannot hear an alarm or instructions during a major incident. This will require a special plan of its own.
Promote Preparedness
Throughout the organisation, ensure that staff and management are aware of your Business Continuity Plan. Regularly allow staff time away from the workplace to practice the plan and ensure that the method of feedback is available so that the plan can be reviewed and if necessary updated after any training, table-top or live exercises are carried out. Ensure that your call-out lists are regularly updated, and your customer and employee information is reviewed and updated on a regular basis.
Warning Procedure
Write a procedure that covers how you intend to warn management, staff, customers, suppliers and the public of an impending emergency, or as a result of an emergency.
Staff Skills Profile
Develop a staff skills profile to ensure that your business is resilient should you be required to redirect your staff resources. By redeveloping this profile you will be able to ensure your resilience as a result of partial staff absenteeism.
Newsletters
Most companies provide staff and their customers with a regular newsletter. This is a good method of ensuring the Business Continuity Planning is promoted throughout the organisation and kept as a high profile issue.
Internet Advice During Emergencies
Develop a database of internet sites that can be accessed during an emergency. There are many sites dealing with both Major Incident Planning and Business Continuity Planning which provide helpful and useful advice. These sites can also when developing your Business Continuity Plan.
Payroll
Should you lose access to your payroll systems and therefore the ability to pay staff in the normal way, ensure that you have a plan in place that will quickly deal with this issue. Consideration should be given to initially paying staff the correct amount but other methods of a standard rate or paying the equivalent of last month’s pay are ways of resolving this quickly with any anomalies being dealt with as a matter of urgency when able to do so. Staff failing to receive their salary on a particular day can cause considerable hardship and stress and for this reason must be included within your Business Continuity Planning arrangements.
