Staff and communications

Who decides

The Cabinet Office toolkit says business continuity needs the full support of senior management from the outset. It recommends appointing someone at management board level to be accountable, and one or more people to take the programme forward.

In the plan itself, invocation is written down: the individuals who have the authority to invoke it, the circumstances in which they may, and the process for mobilising and standing down the teams. The toolkit asks for arrangements that bring the teams together as early as possible, because delay in mobilising them could have a major effect on how well the arrangements work. The plan also names the location from which the incident will be managed and an alternative in case the first cannot be reached.

Keeping in touch with staff

All plans should contain, or point to, the essential contact details for everyone with a role in carrying them out and for all key stakeholders. The toolkit asks for an up-to-date contact list and for the plan to describe where it is kept and how to get it. The emergency pack, held securely off site, includes a list of employees with home and mobile numbers, and may include next-of-kin details.

The incident management section of the plan lists the first tasks and who does each. Three of them are about people: mobilising safety, first aid or evacuation assistance teams; locating and accounting for everyone who was on site or nearby; and ongoing employee and customer communications and safety briefings. When developing the communications strategy, the toolkit says to give particular consideration to people with disabilities or other specific needs.

Planning for fewer staff

Loss of staff is the first risk on the toolkit's list. The business impact analysis asks for the optimum number of staff for each critical activity, the minimum with which some sort of service could be provided, and the skills needed. The tactics it offers are an inventory of staff skills not used in their current roles so people can be redeployed, documented processes so that staff can take on unfamiliar roles, cross-training, succession planning, third-party support backed by contracts, and keeping people with the same core skill in different places so that one event does not remove all of them.

Telling customers and stakeholders

The plan should set out the arrangements for communicating with staff, wider stakeholders and, if necessary, the media. Under stakeholders the toolkit asks for mechanisms to give them information and for arrangements so that vulnerable groups are accommodated. The toolkit's own reason for planning is that delay could lose business to competitors or lose customers' confidence.

When the phones are down

A contact list is only useful if it can be reached. Be Ready's advice to households applies to an office: keep a paper copy of the numbers you need in case a phone loses power or the contacts cannot be opened. A corded landline might still work in a power cut, and calls over Wi-Fi may connect when the mobile network is down. See utilities failure at work and communications when networks fail.

Awareness and training

The toolkit says continuity has to become part of the culture. All new staff should be told about the arrangements at induction, and everyone with a continuity responsibility should receive training; the toolkit's minimum is that they work through the toolkit itself. A discussion exercise, the cheapest to run, is also how staff learn the plan and their own part in it; see testing the plan.