The COVID 19 crisis disrupted businesses all over the world. Big and small businesses are affected as people are advised to quarantine to stop the spread of infection.
Business spaces and offices are places of foot traffic and are hot spots for spreading the virus. Suddenly businesses that used to operate as certain as clockwork are forced to stop operations or adopt alternative measures if they want to keep on functioning. In order to thrive and keep delivering services, a business must make adjustments that will make its operations resilient and thriving under any challenge.
Risk Management Plan
Risk management involves identifying risk, developing strategies to manage them, and assessing such risks. You should know the risks in your business and establish a plan in order to have business continuity. Be aware of the risks your business is most vulnerable to so you can minimize the impact of these risks. Your business will be able to recover and bounce back that much faster once you have identified and done something about the risks and the incidents that may ensue because of it.
Different businesses encounter different types of risks, but an efficient risk management plan involves some common processes. Some common features that are involved in a risk management plan are preparing budget and resources and preparing business impact analysis. You should have these two adequately prepared to help meet your legal obligations in establishing a safe workplace and help reduce the impact of incidents having a negative effect on your business.
Business Impact Analysis
When you have established a risk management plan, you can conduct a business impact analysis to know how risks will affect your business operations. This is part of the preparedness step in a business continuity plan.
There are critical business activities you should be doing during this stage, and it is key to your survival. You should place importance on the following:
- Your daily records and documents
- Have an overview of operational resources and equipment
- Your employee’s skills and knowledge that help you run your business
- Stakeholders who have invested in you and rely on you and whom you rely on
- Your legal obligations
- The impact of ceasing activities in certain business processes.
- Analyze how long your business can survive after stopping certain processes and activities.
You should know where your business stands in the above conditions so you can assign recovery time objectives. This move will also help you identify your recovery requirements. Do you need a special workforce? Do you need a legal team such as Lockett McCullough Lawyers can provide? Do you need extra funds? These are just some of the requirements that may come up. Recovery time objectives is the phase between when an incident happens to the time when a business becomes fully operational once again.
Incident Response Plan
The incident response plan is the plan and direct action you will take to mitigate any crisis that can hurt your business. Your plan is an outline of the different incidents or crisis situations in which an incident response plan is to be used. The plan should point to specific actions that need to be taken to minimize the loss of life, property, and any other resources. This should all be identified and acted upon immediately before a crisis, during and immediately after.
Some of the things that should be included in an incident response plan are:
- Identifying the persons who will be authorized to activate the plan and outline the plan activation details.
- Identifying the key role and responsibilities of your chosen team for the incident response.
- Having an emergency kit
- Having a communication plan to keep everyone safe and connected
- Having a record of information on decisions and actions done during the crisis.
Recovery Plan
To make your response to an incident or crisis faster and more efficient, you will need a recovery plan. The goal of a recovery plan is to minimize your losses and help you bounce back faster.
Your recovery plan should contain information referring to planning for recovery and when you will resume critical business processes after a crisis. Time is crucial to a recovery plan, and it should outline the timeframe in which you are expected to resume operations. A recovery plan helps you analyze and visualize how you can get your business back to normal once you meet a crisis such as this global pandemic.
