Armistead Whitney, CEO of
Preparis Inc., a global business preparedness company, makes the compelling point in
Enterprise Systems that disaster recovery and continuity planning are about more than just backing up your servers to a secure offsite location. They should be about protecting your people and making sure they're equipped to bounce back from any sort of disaster. His four big thoughts:
It's a New World
One of the many business lessons to come out of the horror of 9/11 was the need to prepare your employees and operations for disaster. This decade has also demonstrated that these threats can come from a variety of sources -- whether pandemics such as H1N1, natural disasters (which seem to be exacerbated by global warming), or workplace violence (which grows with rising unemployment rates).
Technologies Support Better Readiness
Consider the recent advances in communications technology when thinking about the preparedness of your workforce. Written business continuity plans sitting on the shelf, although good to have, are difficult to update, communicate, and actually use during a crisis. Software as a service (SaaS), on the other hand, can be utilized to effectively develop an 'on-demand' continuity program.
Practice Makes Perfect
Crisis team managers should be certified and need to be briefed regularly on key issues. As many will rely on their knowledge and actions, response skills to multiple threat scenarios should be refreshed regularly to improve the likelihood of successful recovery from a crisis.
Without Your Employees, You Have No Business
Recent surveys have shown that businesses unprepared to address a crisis have a 40 percent chance of closing their doors within two years. Are you prepared to face those odds? Is the program you¿re developing sufficient to address the key concerns? How useful is your data if your workforce isn¿t there to access it?
That's right. No matter how great your IT infrastructure is, people do still have to come first.
-- Don Willmott