The importance of communication.

Staying in touch.

When things go wrong, it is important to maintain communication. Your Business Continuity Plan has to have the required information and you have to have alternates already in place, not being able to communicate with people will exacerbate the problems that you are already facing.

Remember that the objective of the Business Continuity Plan is to return the business to normal operation as quickly as possible, maintaining communication is an important part of the plan.

Not being available will undermine customer confidence, the fact that your customers can probably source equivalent goods or services from an alternate supplier will impact you financially.

Actioning the continuity plan!

When you have to action your Business Continuity Plan you have to be able to communicate that fact to your personnel, so it is essential that that you can contact people – the plan should contain multiple points of contact for the people required by the plan.

Remember having to execute the business continuity plan is likely to mean that there will be disruption to normal communication channels, this is not a normal circumstance – the information needs to be in the plan.

What to do if you can’t make contact with staff.

It is important to have alternate people if this is possible, being unable to contact people can have a serious impact on the plan itself. As an example during a continuity plan test where I was a participant, someone who had been missed from the original notification of the test – had gone for a long walk with their dog. As a consequence the five hour delay in contacting them led to the cancellation of the test, the plan was amended to compensate – however there had been significant costs to the company.

Customer and Supplier Communications.

Could you maintain communication with your suppliers and customers, is the information in your plan? Would the loss of a system make the information difficult or impossible to access?

Not being able to get in contact with someone is frustrating, not being able to contact someone when you are expecting a purchase undermines confidence. Having to expend effort to find out something that should have been communicated can lead to a loss of confidence, with the options provided by the internet – not being contactable is likely to translate into lost sales and revenue.

Maintaining Communication.

There are a number of things that you can do as far as being able to comminicate goes, using email, social media and voice communications should be considered as viable options today.

What and when to communicate.

What you communicate is just as important as maintaining communications, this is especially important when communicating with customers. The message that you give out should be accurate and concice, it is also important that there are fairly regular updates.

What to say initially.

Getting a message out to your people is important, the message does not need to go into great detail.

• The people executing the plan need to know you have “Invoked the BCP”.
• The Customers need to know that there are “Techical Difficulties”.
• Everyone needs to know that there will be “Regular Updates”.
• If possible give an indication of expectations.

Remember to keep as many people as possible in the loop.