No matter what organisation you work for or run, it is important to have a business continuity plan (BCP). 

A BCP should include business management procedures, a business continuity strategy and risk assessments. This plan needs involvement from all areas of the business, and each area of the business should have their more detailed plan for their specific requirements during a time of disruption or crisis. 

But what is your personal BCP? What is your coping strategy should there be an incident or crisis at work? 

Rallying round

When a BCP is put into action it seems like we need to put all hands to the pumps. There is a surge of activity that needs to happen and teams need to coordinate between each other to make sure all areas are covered. 

This can feel like a high energy time, but depending on the incident, you could be in this situation for a long period of time (sorry to mention the ‘C’ word here, but Covid is an excellent example). A crucial part of a BCP is considering the physical and mental wellbeing of you and those around you.

Looking after you

When you’re writing your BCP, think about you and your team and what support there is available to you all during a period of sustained business continuity. This could be access to in-house or external health and wellbeing information. Part of enacting your BCP is regularly reminding employees where they can go to get help if they feel that are struggling physically or mentally from the situation. 

You could also:

• Have more regular 1-2-1 catch-ups with your team members, even if it’s just a phone call to check in with them. 
• Make sure you all have access to your organisation employee assistance programme. If your organisation doesn’t have one, make sure your team know where they can confidential advice on how they are feeling. 
• Recognise employees for their hard work, be that financially, time off in lieu, or through reward and recognition schemes.

All of these combined will help to build towards better team morale, which is crucial when times are stretched. It can be tough to keep on top of things when everyone is pushed for time, but the above will pay dividends with your teams.

Getting some down-time

In a crisis situation, you may be required to work longer hours than usual or even different hours to what you are used to. But you need to make sure you all get down-time to recharge. Make sure that you give yourself non-negotiable boundaries on what you need to do to keep well. This will be different for everyone depending on your personal circumstances. Always take into consideration the ‘human’ element – we all have lives outside of the workplace and we don’t know what demands and pressures others might be facing outside of their job. 

This is where we need to take the time to understand our teams and decide not only who is best placed to do what in a crisis, but also how this can realistically fit in with their personal situation. 

If this is not taken into account, you may see members of your team (or even you) feeling burnt out. This means there will be a likelihood of sickness, which in turn will put more pressures on the team. 

Planning for every eventuality  

We can’t possibly plan for every eventuality – think back to this time last year, could you have planned for everything that has happened since? The answer is no, unless you have a functioning crystal ball. 

You need to be realistic - what are the main things that could affect you and your team (this is part of your risk assessment) and what can you put in place to help relieve and anxieties that may arise? Involve your team in this planning, they may have concerns that you haven’t considered. Also, by keeping your team involved in this planning, they’ll not only know what to do when a BCP is enacted, but you’ll know that the team have bought into the plan. 

Finally - lessons learned 

When the incident has passed, take time to sit down with you team and write down what you learned during the incident and how you could have responded differently. This will help to make sure that in the future, you and your team will be able to take a deep breath and be prepared.