The met office has issued cold weather warnings throughout the UK for this weekend and into next week (commencing 2nd February). Snow has already fallen on higher ground this week with a covering expected across some other areas of the UK in the coming days.
In the height of winter, have you considered how your business may recover if your office had to close due to snow, frozen pipes or ice? Do you have a continuity plan in place for absent employees who can’t make it in to work due to snow or lack of childcare from school closures?
You may have all of these things covered or you may be thinking where do I start?! Whichever situation you may be in, it’s always worth checking that your continuity plan for business recovery priorities and risks are up to date and in place for when you need them.
1. Make a logical structure of your business functions and prioritise them. Identify the ‘core’ activities and understand who these are provided to. In the event of your business functions not working properly, recognise the financial and non-financial impacts that these may have.
2. In order to identify recovery times for each business function outline:
i. How quickly will it need to be back
ii. What man power you will need (within 2 days)
iii. Systems, applications and data will be required
3. You can then create a business recovery profile to identify the staff needed across critical functions. Using your logical structure take your existing compliment of staff and build them back up from 0, using a suitable timeframe e.g. 10 within 24hrs 20 within 48hrs etc.
Following this a comprehensive risk assessment analysis should be conducted to limit risks in general. You can find out how to do this, as well as finding help and advice for all business risks here.
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