Is Your Company's Disaster-Recovery Plan A Disaster?
"Business continuity management and disaster recovery professionals and other stakeholders should use the widespread concern over the swine flu as an opportunity to prevent their enterprises from becoming victims of uncertainty, panic, misinformation and a lack of preparedness to increase enterprise awareness of the potential business impact of a widespread outbreak of disease," said Richard De Lotto, principal research analyst at Gartner.
Experts estimate that should the outbreak become pandemic in nature, it could result in absenteeism of 40 percent. High absenteeism would be true of other disasters as well, obviously: A major hurricane can leave businesses without anyone there to man the fort, for example.
In a release this week, Gartner suggested companies review pandemic response plans. We can, however, extrapolate common-sense precautions that can apply to any type of disaster. They include:
1. Identify existing and projected critical skills shortages. If a disaster strikes, where are your most crucial business areas, and how will you continue operations?
2. Initiate necessary cross-training, testing or certification of personnel. In a worst-case scenario, there are people trained to fill in where needed. Don't forget: Cross-trained personnel will need the appropriate system/applications access rights.
3. Determine which business operations are sustainable, and at what level, and the likely downtime for normal business operations during periods with absenteeism rates of 40 percent or higher.
4. Immediately initiate rigorous, ongoing and well-documented testing to isolate and remediate identified problem areas.
5. Prepare for travel restrictions to be significant. Again, this is true not only in the event of widespread illness, but also the in the aftermath of a natural disaster, where infrastructure may be compromised.
6. Implement a communications program that ensures that all personnel are aware of the enterprise's disaster plans.