How was the snow?
In December 2010 it is likely that you suffered some disruption with the sudden high levels of snow, whether that was on plane, train or automobile.
But how did is effect your business?
BS25999 is a reasonably new British Standard regarding Business Continuity, where according to the standard business continuity is defined as “strategic and tactical capability of the organization to plan for and respond to incidents and business disruptions in order to continue business operations at an acceptable predefined level.”
The standard requires an organisation to identify their business continuity risks, rank them for importance and where a risk is unacceptable do something about it.
Eaglet (the company where I am director and 50% shareholder) had one of our principals stuck off mainland UK for 4 days, and the whole department unmanned for a similar period. This meant that I had to venture into the office and take charge of our back office operations as well as front line services, and whilst I know that I did not do it as well as our normal team would do we had defined procedures in place to make sure that things were done in a standard way (and paperwork completed in a standard way), we had a disruption plan to minimise disruption and we had the confidence that everything would be OK.
Quoting the British Insurance Brokers Association who state: “Government figures suggest nearly one in five businesses suffers a major disruption every year. Further research suggests 80% of businesses affected by a major incident close down within 18 months, and 90% of those who lose their data are forced to close down within two years.” (http://www.biba.org.uk/ConsumerContentDetails.aspx?ContentID=380)
I am not sure whether those statistics are accurate as there is no independent verification to prove or disprove, but either way, in the business of risk management, are you prepared to take the risk, and not put in a business continuity system?
About the author
Wayne Pearce
Wayne Pearce is recognised as one of the UK’s leading trainer, consultant and auditor in ISO9000 (Quality Management Systems), ISO14000 (Environmental Management Systems), ISO18000 (Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems) BS25999 (Business Continuity Management Systems) and ISO27001 (Information Security Management Systems) boasting a 100% first time certification success rate in all.
Tel: 08707 511007
www.eagletuk.co.uk
