Business continuity
Business continuity
Prepare your business (business continuity) for disruptions & incidents
What would happen if your business had to run without your premises, suppliers, IT, phones or even some or all of your staff?
Making a Business Continuity Plan will help you prepare for and respond to disruptions and incidents.
The plan would help you define the key products and services you would still be able to deliver.
A Business Continuity (BC) Policy can be described as a set of standards and guidelines an organisation has in place to ensure resilience and proper risk management arrangements are in place. Business Continuity policies vary between organisations and industry. All Business Continuity policies require periodic updates as technologies evolve and as business risks change.
It is important to have a broad overview of perceived business risk and to look at all critical aspects of the goods and services you provide. It would be easy to concentrate on what may be perceived to be a major crisis such as terrorism, flooding, serious fires, significant cyber-attack, to a pandemic influenza amongst many other examples but don’t forget to think about the less predictable problems, such as software disruptions, instructions and training for your staff, product knowledge etc. Successful resilience businesses can to continue providing their goods and services even when things go wrong.
For reference, please see the Business continuity policy Nov 2020
The Council has a legal duty to help promote business continuity. It is your responsibility as a business owner or manager to develop your own plans; we can offer advice and guidance.
There are 5 basic steps to Business Continuity:
They are:
- understand the risks your business faces and identify its key functions
- identify resources required to resume the appropriate level of service delivery
- develop a contingency plan to meet the level of delivery identified in Step 2
- train your staff, make them aware of the importance of business continuity
- exercise your plans and regularly review and update them
We have created some helpful templates and guidance for you to use if you wish.
The Council uses these templates to identify critical functions and assess each function in turn. You can apply the same principles to your business or organisations. The Business Impact Assessment Template alongside the Business impact assessment guidance once populated form a business continuity plan.
The Council can help you with a range of other business matters including support and advice. For more information https://www.gedling.gov.uk/businesshub/businesssupport/
You may also find the Governments Business Continuity toolkit useful as well.
Business Continuity Management Toolkit
Find out what is happening locally to prepare and to respond to emergencies from the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Local Resilience Forum. https://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/site-page/emergency-planning-preparing-nottingham-and-nottinghamshire