Business Resilience Training
A bank in Australia undertook some Business Resilience Training and decided to test their Business Continuity Plan one weekend with a power-outage.
The bank arranged for the power company to turn off their power. When everything was ready and connected to the back-up generator (even the air-conditioning – because it was summer) they switched off the power. Unfortunately, they forgot to connect the phone system to the back-up generator. This resulted in an unplanned shutdown, which wreaked havoc on their phone system and it wasn’t back up and running properly for weeks.
Natural Disasters
It is easy to expect that power will always be available. However, it is quite common for a storm to knock out the power-grid. A recent example is that of Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria – which left the area without power for months.
Many companies have a back-up plan of “working from home” in a power outage. This can be a good solution if you have taken the time to think through the potential issues which could arise.
The below video provides practical tips for preparing your business for a power outage, especially if your plan is to ask employees to work from home.
Here are a few things to consider:
- Have a generator that is maintained and regularly tested – or set up an agreement with your local Hire Company.
- How far do your staff live from the office? Will their homes have power?
- Do your staff have Laptops or Desktop computers?
- Do your staff take their Laptops home each evening, or outside during a Fire Drill?
- How often do your staff work from home? Have they tested the functionality recently?
- What is the capacity of your remote connection? Is there a risk of the system being overloaded?
BCP Builder Community Feedback
- This is a must in order to ensure continuity and is a great example, phone systems are often neglected in this age of email, but that is very critical.
- As more and more businesses move to running their phones over digital networks (VOIP) the old school landline phones are becoming a rarity in my experience.
- The risk of moving away from landline phones is discussed further in my blog on Communications Resilience.
If you want to increase your Organizational Resilience, start with preparing a Business Continuity Plan and check out BCP Builder’s Business Continuity Plan Template.
