Business Continuity Plans

Introduction

Unplanned events can have a devastating effect on businesses. Crises such as fire, damage to stock, theft or vandalism, natural disasters, powers cuts, illness of key staff or IT system failure, etc., could all make it difficult or even impossible to carry out your normal day-to-day activities.

At worst, this could see you losing important customers - and even going out of business altogether.

But with good planning you can take steps to minimise the potential impact of a disaster - and ideally prevent it happening in the first place.

Aims

This course will help you to identify potential risks, make preparations for emergencies and test how your business is likely to cope in a disaster.

The Course includes:

Business continuity planning in the event of a major fire or catastrophic event.

Record keeping

Action plan

Key personnel and roles

In order to develop a business continuity plan you need to have a thorough understanding of your business. This involves knowing the critical functions of your business, the effect of those functions being disrupted and the priority for recovery of those functions. This process is known as a business impact analysis.

You should consider the importance of the function on the survival of your business (percentage of income or work load, how critical the function is to other functions, etc) and how quickly each function must be re-established.

The completed business impact analysis will assist you to prioritise what or service you need to reinstate first during an emergency.

The business continuity management process is a circular process; it is vital the planning does not end once the plan is written. It should be reviewed and tested to ensure it remains up to date and effective.

Delegates will be issued with a Certificate of Attendance.