Business Continuity Planning: Increasing Workplace Resilience to Disasters

Terrorism, natural disasters, or hazardous materials threaten the viability for all types of businesses. With an eye toward business scale, scope, and diversity, Business Continuity Planning: Increasing Workplace Resilience to Disasters, addresses a range of potential businesses from home-based to large corporations in the face of these threats, including the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Information on business continuity planning is easy to find but can be difficult to work through. Terminology, required content, and planning barriers often prevent progress. This volume solves such problems by guiding readers, step-by-step, through such actions as identifying hazards and assessing risks, writing critical functions, forming teams, and encouraging stakeholder participation. In essence, this volume serves as a business continuity planning coach for people new to the process or seeking to strengthen and deepen their ongoing efforts. By engaging stakeholders in a business continuity planning process, businesses can protect employees, customers, and their financial stability. Coupled with examples from recent disasters, planners will be able to inspire and involve stakeholders in creating a more resilient workplace. Designed for both educators and practitioners, Business Continuity Planning: Increasing Workplace Resilience to Disasters walks users through how to understand and execute the essential steps of business continuity planning.

Presents evidence-based best practices coupled with standard operating procedures for business continuity planning in a stepwise, user-oriented mannerIncludes numerous examples and case studies bringing the ideas and procedures to lifeProvides user-friendly materials and resources, such as templated worksheets, checklists, and procedures with clear instructions, making the volume engaging and immediately operational

Chapter One. The Challenges of Business Continuity Planning

Introduction

What Most Businesses Do (Not Do) in a Disaster

Hazards that Become (Business) Disasters

• Natural Hazards

• Tsunamis and Cascading Events
• Hurricanes and Cyclones
• Floods
• Earthquakes
• Volcanos
• Tornadoes
• Hazardous Materials
• Technological Disruptions
• Terrorism and Active Attackers
• Pandemics

Types of Disaster Planning

• Mitigation Planning
• Preparedness and Planning
• Response Planning
• Recovery and Business Continuity Planning

The Benefits of Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

• Mission fulfillment
• The financial bottom line
• Loss containment
• Customer bases
• Human resources
• Diversity in the business community

Essential Principles for BC Planning

• Involvement and inclusion
• Planning is a process
• Evidence-based planning
• A culture of continuity

Upcoming Chapters

Chapter Two. Setting the Stage

The Challenges of Business Continuity Planning

• Getting people’s attention
• Securing a commitment from the CEO
• Lack of knowledge or understanding
• Educating and involving people on planning as a process

The Effects of Disasters on Businesses

• Direct impacts
• Indirect impacts
• Downtime
• Displacement
• Impacts on employees
• Impacts on customers
• Businesses that fail

Essential Actions for Starting the Planning Process

• Get a team together
• Establish a timeline
• Kick off the BCP effort
• Build and maintain momentum

Chapter Three. Pre-planning Steps to Launch BCP

Introduction

Hazard Identification

• Sources of hazard information
• How to write up a hazard identification

Risk Assessment

• Understanding probabilities and historic trends
• Crafting Scenarios

Loss Estimation

• Kinds of losses to estimate
• Broader community impacts

Business impact analysis

Determining Acceptable Losses

Mitigating Losses

Essential Actions

Chapter Four. Parts of a Business Continuity Plan

Scenarios and Decision-Making

• Pandemic
• Technology Disruptions
• Natural Disasters

Critical Functions

• Prioritizing Critical Functions
• Work Teams

Assets and Workarounds

Essential Partnerships

Essential Actions to Take

Chapter Five. Managing Disruptions

Introduction

Infrastructure Disruptions

• Anticipating Disruptions
• Utilities
• Communication and Information Technology
• Transportation arteries and supply chains

Downtime Management

• How utilities get back on
• The role of critical function work teams

Displacement Management

• Site displacement
• Functional displacement
• Population displacement

Restoring Critical Functions

Essential Actions

Chapter Six. Managing Human Resources

Introduction

Case Examples

• Terrorism
• Natural Disaster
• Pandemic

The Critical Role of Human Resources Management

• Business Continuity Planning for Human Resource Management
• Preparing Employees for Disruptions

What Employees May Experience

• Personal Impacts
• Professional Impacts

What Employers May Experience

• Coping with Employee Impacts
• Coping with Immediate Business Impacts

Navigating Recovery

• Transitioning from Response to Recovery

• The 2004 Tsunami
• The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake
• Recognizing and Rewarding Employees

Essential Actions

Chapter 7. Strengthening and Testing your Business Continuity Plan

Introduction

Training on the BCP

• Why you need to know the plan
• Teachable moments
• Training options
• What to train on

Creating scenarios

· Exercises

• Tabletop
• Full scale
• Field

Virtual/Simulations

· Creating a culture of preparedness

Essential Actions

Chapter 8. Becoming More Resilient

Introduction

• Disaster losses and future predictions

Resilience

• The Sendai Framework

Mitigation

• The purpose of mitigation
• Becoming a champion for mitigation

The Recovery Process

• Employee support
• Flexibility
• Sustainability

Essential Actions

Appendix 1. Emergency Response Planning Basics 2. Mitigation Planning Basics 3. Essential Tools and Resources for BCP (worksheets, checklists, etc.)