The Novel Coronavirus pandemic has left businesses hard hit, with little enterprise provision in place to cope with all the changes being effected in our environment as protectionary measures against contracting the virus. While companies with network and infrastructure planning results, such as a Business Continuity Plan (BCP), might still have been able to emerge through somewhat unscathed, a pandemic situation is most definitely not the disruption it accounted for. However, with reports of a second wave of the Coronavirus contagion surfacing, businesses need to engage themselves in immediate pandemic planning, if they haven’t already. Even if they haven’t participated in pandemic planning for their business operations per se, they will have had to make changes to their network and infrastructure aligned with the safety guidelines released by the WHO. In essence, this too fulfils the purpose of BCP. The pandemic has brought about new ways of thinking, living, working, and being for all of us. But, how do we ready the network and infrastructure of our business enterprise better for a second onslaught of the same or future pandemics outbreaks?
It is Important to Keep Revising and Improving Our BCP
The most effective Business Continuity Plans are those who are constantly subject to revision to keep them relevant and competent. As your own business grows and changes, so will your Business Continuity Plans need to. It is crucial that those in charge of creating and maintaining these BCPs keep engaging with them to better them, as there are always situations, previously unanticipated, that could arise.
Document and Test Your BCPs
Real-world testing of your Business Continuity Plans will help you find out just how effective these plans are, for implementation for the betterment of your business in crisis situations. Documentation also becomes important as unlike regular testing of BCPs that last days, the pandemic has been on for over months now. The documented reports could be used to your company’s advantage in the future. It becomes all the more necessary to practice documentation now as popular memory is weakest during times of stress. You can always carry out personal check-ins with employees, but their memory will begin to become corrupted with time, if at all present. Documenting these reports is a more reliable way of accessing information later. In addition, it will enable you to organize this information received to enable smoother and accurate retreival. You can then review all of this documented evidence gathered and devise an effective Pandemic Plan as part of your Business Continuity Planning to present a more prepared front in the future. Your Pandemic Plan can also contain strategies to implement, to make the transition from remote work back to the office easier for your company’s employees.
