Business Continuity Management

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Author : Konstantina Karatzoudi

A business organization runs always the risk to confront an issue or a crisis which can seriously affect its operations and cause damage to its reputation. In such cases, it is crucial for the organization to adopt an effective crisis communication plan when dealing with the media and its stakeholders. A good crisis communication plan targets not only to facilitate the flow of information during a crisis, but also inform and educate before a crisis develops. Key elements of a successful communication plan can be timely communications, plan customization to fit the situation, the introduction of a system of severity levels, each of that will use an appropriate response, well-trained and authorized spokespersons who will be willing to perform the job and would meet some important requirements during stressful situations. Effective crisis communication planning can also eliminate speculation and show that the organization is under control and do the right thing as well as can eliminate rumours. The more effective crisis plan an organization has, the less reputational loss the organization suffers.

In cases where an organization fails to manage a crisis communication, this failure can result in serious losses for the organization, serious harm to its stakeholders and even the end of its existence. It is taken for granted that reputational damage can cause huge financial impact to all parts that have an interest in one organization. An unsuccessful crisis communication can feed rumours which can deeply affect any organization and undermine stakeholders trust.

Lessons that could be learned from cases where organizations did not have crisis communication plans are that many companies ignore the role of crisis communication during and after a crisis. Another lesson is that stakeholders should be stay informed to feel safe and connected with the situation when a crisis occurs so they expected to receive a trustworthy reporting and a continued communication. In addition, crisis communication is much more effective when it is used to help managers to prevent situations, to reduce their probability to happen and to be more prepared to deal with the crisis.

This type of proactive communication can create credibility, trust and can help company to restore any reputational damage.

References

Bratton, M. (2012). Crisis Communications: An Organizational Balancing Act. Avalution’s Perspective on Business Continuity & IT Disaster Recovery.

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Author : Konstantina Karatzoudi

The adoption of business continuity management by companies is becoming more and more a necessity during the last years. It is a crucial parameter to achieve the resilience of a business organization as it improves the management’s capability to identify potential impacts that threaten a business organization and provide a framework for protecting the interests of stakeholders, reputation and value-creating activities.

Although the increasing necessity and the importance of having an emergency response plan, there are still many businesses that resist implementing the above procedures. Most of businesses can argue about their decision of not implementing preparedness planning focusing on the fact that their organization rarely suffers from disruptive events and they are able to deal with the disruption when it occurs, most actual approach for small private organizations. However, their arguments do not end here. Many businesses do not place the business continuity as a top priority. They can even argue that continuity issues have been already covered by other plans inside the organization, showing that they do not perceive the business preparedness as a separate procedure that needs a separate planning. Consequently, they do not realize the benefits gained by implementing a preparedness planning. Another reason is the lack of expertise. This means that companies lacking expertise need to allocate budget resources for implement emergency plans, an investment that is considered too expensive by the senior management. Or the reason can be simpler, the senior management is just not interested in implementing preparedness planning as this is defined by the culture of the organization.

So, is it a challenge to convince the senior management to make the necessary investment?

In my opinion, the key element here can be the projection of benefits that other businesses have experienced (financial and non-financial) after implementing a preparedness planning. According to surveys, managers in organizations that have activated business continuity plans have reported numerous benefits gained by this implementation. The reported benefits were, among others, that the preparedness enabled the organizations to return to normal operations more quickly than otherwise, the cost of developing a preparedness planning is covered by the benefits that the organization brings, it effectively reduced the impact of the disruption event, it enabled the continued delivery of services to customers without interruption, it effectively supported the employees after recovery and contributed to personal and family resilience of employees, a critical factor for business continuity.

In short, someone can argument in favor of preparedness planning that can overcome its costs of implementation in long-term, as it can improve the business resilience, can effectively protect the business reputation, can allow meeting customer requirements without interruption, can ensure fulfillment of regulatory requirements and can, in general, improve understanding of risk to organization, all factors that can provide a competitive advantage to organizations with preparedness planning.

Do you need more reasons to decide in favor of Business Continuity Management?