7 minute read
Corporate view 22
How to prepare for the unexpected
With COVID-19 causing disruption for organisations from all sectors across the globe, those with business continuity management systems (BCMS) in place put them into action.
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Ray Woodford (AMBCI), UK ISO 22301 Product Manager at SGS United Kingdom Ltd, explains how a BCMS that is certified to ISO 22301 provides a best practice framework for identifying potential threats and defines a comprehensive strategy that minimises the impact of an unplanned event. Even if an organisation has never experienced a serious incident, ISO 22301 helps to define key business processes and the impact that could result from any threats. Potential risks and the consequences for processes must be identified through a business impact analysis (BIA) – the crucial first step in the implementation of a BCMS. A BIA helps to identify critical activities, dependencies and resources that support an organisation’s key products and services, as well as the impact their failure would have. ISO 22301 clearly places emphasis on the need for a well-defined incident response structure, so that when an event occurs responses are escalated in a timely manner and people are empowered to take the necessary actions to be effective. An organisation must also communicate with external parties who may be affected, for instance, if an incident poses a risk to those in surrounding geographical areas. To put this into context regarding coronavirus, organisations need to ensure that a plan is in place if an employee is diagnosed with COVID-19. Likewise, a home working policy should be introduced that takes into account government guidance, reviews job roles to ensure key processes can be carried out by skeleton staff, and ensure that those with identical/similar roles are not in the office at the same time. Staff should also have a dedicated helpline or contact to share personal concerns about COVID-19 and leave policies implemented to allow staff to care for relatives. When working from home, high quality awareness training in the use of ICT tools and steps to prevent the heightened risk of phishing attacks and scams should also be considered.
Although the size and scale of this pandemic and the disruption it has caused is unprecedented in living memory, there are many more common threats to business operations that should be considered. Acts of terrorism, natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, downtime caused by power outages, loss of internet connectivity and cyber-attacks are far more commonplace, but are likely to have a detrimental impact on operational effectiveness. “It will never happen to us” is an attitude that, unfortunately, continues to prevail within some organisations that fail to acknowledge the dangers they could directly, or even indirectly, be exposed to. The fact is that most organisations will at some point be faced with having to respond to an incident that may disrupt or threaten the day-to-day operations of their businesses. Preparing in advance for something untoward happening that could prevent an enterprise from functioning cannot be left to chance. Preparedness involves being aware of a situation, the risks it presents, any vulnerabilities and the capabilities required to deal with them, as well as the need to be able to make informed tactical and strategic decisions. So, working out what keeps a business running and who and what it relies upon is the first stage in developing a more robust operation. In our fast paced, 24/7 world, business continuity management is crucial, as for some companies the financial cost of downtime can run into tens of thousands of pounds an hour, cause irreparable reputational damage or even lead to them going out of business altogether. An ISO 22301 certified BCMS provides a best practice framework for identifying potential threats and developing a strategy to minimise disruption should an unplanned event occur. Working with an experienced certification body, such as SGS, who is able to define performance metrics, configure tests, provide training, conduct regular audits and review and outline ways to improve a BCMS is the key to a successful outcome. Implementing the results will increase an organisation’s resilience, speed up recovery time and improve its risk profile with customers, supply chain, insurers and stakeholders.
Covid-19 and Future Planning: Five tips on making your team and your business more agile
The business world has changed and lots of people like myself, who enjoy working in an office, will need to work remotely from time to time.
Over the last 18 months, I have been so proud of how our team at OpenCRM adapted to everything that has been thrown at them. On virtually no notice, the entire team transitioned to working remotely. It was practically seamless. I say practically because in those first few days and weeks we found a few areas where we needed to make some changes. Mainly implementing new processes or relying more heavily on software to keep things running smoothly. But I think every business had similar hurdles to overcome.
The whole process highlighted to me the importance of agile business processes. And fostering an equally agile working environment. I’d like to share my top five tips on doing just that:
Tip #1: Regular, Recurring Team Meetings
Having regular meetings, daily, weekly, or even monthly, allows remote workers to feel more engaged. But it also helps everyone stay up to date on what their teammates are working on. These could be informal morning chats, where attendance and participation are optional. Weekly small team meetings to pass on progress and important news. Or even monthly company meetings for more general business updates. The important thing is that you make a schedule and keep to it.
Tip #2: Autonomy and Responsibility
One of the most common complaints I hear from managers about remote working is that they don’t know if their employees are actually working. But, I always ask, you know if they’re working based on their output, right? By giving people responsibility and ownership of the jobs they need to get done, you motivate them to achieve their goals. It’s their task—and it will sink or swim based entirely on what they put into it. I have always found this to be the best way to motivate people and it paid dividends when we moved to remote working.
Tip #3: Training and Guidance
Of course, if you want people to achieve targets and goals, they need to know how to complete the various tasks and jobs along the way. And that means investing time, energy, and even your profits into making sure they have the right training and knowledge to do so. This process can feel slow and occasionally even expensive, but once one person has the know-how, they can share that with the rest of the team. Making everyone more effective in their day-to-day job.
Tip #4: Clear, Documented Processes
So they’ve got the knowledge and the motivation, now they just need to know what it is they are supposed to do. And, importantly, how it fits in with the other people on their team and in the wider business.
Having clear, documented processes means that every single person knows what they are doing and why they are doing it. You’ll also need to have somewhere for these various processes to take place…which brings me neatly to my next tip.
Tip #5: Have the Right Tools
In order to do their job, remotely or in the office, your team need to have the right tools. When working remotely, this means they need systems that let them work independently, while also investing in tools that allow them to communicate and collaborate effectively. When the pandemic hit, we already relied almost entirely on cloud based systems (like our very own CRM system), but did find that some of our other systems just weren’t up to the job. So we found ones that were and got everyone trained up on them. By not being afraid to change out tools and systems, we were able to find the right ones for what we needed.
We always set out to build an agile team, and have always thought of ourselves as being adaptable. But these past several months have really highlighted to me the importance of this approach and areas where theoretical planning fell down.
I won’t pretend that we never ran into any hurdles, of course we did. But we discussed them as a team and found the best ways to overcome them. These ranged from new processes to new software to some general education for some (or all) of us. I wanted to write this article, not to crow about how great my team is (although, they do deserve it), but rather to share with you what we learned over the last year. As I write this, many of us are still happily working from home. Some have returned to the office full time. And we’ve even got a few who split their time between being in the office and working remotely. We’ve learned to be more flexible in our approach to where people work and it has only made us stronger.
