What is Business Continuity Plan Maintenance?
Scott Baldwin, CBCP, MBCI explains how to use the maintenance of your Business Continuity Plan to create a consistent and living continuity of risk awareness within a program.
Are your Business Continuity Plans living documents that are updated regularly?
I had a conversation this week about an Emergency Plan that had almost completed a one-year review process. The information is now so old it needs to be updated again! Thankfully the plan is to turn it into a living document when it’s finally signed off.
How do you ensure your Business Continuity Plans are ‘living’ documents – rather than something updated annually?
Feedback from BCP Builder Community
- An interesting question for leaders to ask; how often do plans get dusted off and a new signature applied?
- The ‘Plan, Do, Check, Act’ mantra has become stale and not properly applied.
- Planning is good, but first you need awareness.
- Business Continuity has strayed too far from the “What if?” position and instead is focused on the “Here is the answer position”. By doing this it stops organizations being agile.
- An alternative method is a five stage change management framework; after all a disruptive event is unforeseen change. The stages are Awareness, Preparation, Practice, Implementation, Review and Sustain. The benefit is that it also allows individuals to place activities into each area, thus creating a high level plan at the same time. This framework can be used to integrate and sustain a Business Continuity Management framework into an organization.
- Like a lot of plans in a lot of places they often sit there and are lucky to get reviewed/updated every couple of years. It is good to hear of places doing it regularly.
- You need to have a Business Continuity Maintenance document which clarifies the periodic review for each Business Continuity document with details.
- It should be recommended to all staff, that when there is any change in the work environment they need to ensure they have updated their plans. Do not wait until the next year to change any document.
If you want to start preparing your plans – take a look at BCP Builder’s Business Continuity Plan Template.
