How Do I Prepare and Train The Rest of My Organisation Staff Members on BCM?

The focus of a typical BCM program is to ensure the competency of the Organisation's BCM Coordinator, followed by the Business Unit (BU) Business Continuity Management (BCM) Coordinators. One of the least-managed groups in terms of competency within the organisation is the rest of the staff members.

BU BCM Coordinator

These deemed as "part-timers" in the BCM program are often neglected because of their limited involvement during “peacetime” as the administrative role for the BU-level plan is taken care of by the Business Unit (BU) BCM Coordinator.

General Organisation Staff Members

Apart from the BU BCM Coordinator, who is designated to represent the business unit in implementing their BU BC plan, the rest of the organisation must be aware of the BC plan.  These colleagues are now referred to as "General Organisation Staff Members".

Knowledge of what to do and where to go during a crisis or disaster can save lives and costs to the organisation and speed up the process of business recovery. Often, the retrieval of critical items such as vital records, laptops, and backups forms part of the procedures within a BC Plan. Such retrievals during an evacuation may fall under the responsibilities of general staff members.

Therefore, it is important that briefings be conducted to emphasize the importance of BC Plans and the significance of their roles in contributing to an organisation's continuity following a disaster. The organisation may decide on the level of involvement of staff members in the BC process by identifying those required for the continued running of identified critical business functions. Briefings detailing their crisis response duties and roles are helpful for these staff.

Hence, the staff member needs to know from the three levels of competencies of "Know-Do-Manage" is the "Know" Competency. 

Roles and Responsibilities

The full range of roles and responsibilities for staff, in general, are shown in the table below:

• Be aware of the role of BCM in the organisation;
• Be aware of crisis response functions and duties, and
• Carry out procedures stated in BCM Plans to ensure continuity of the organisation during a disaster.

Training Roadmap for General Staff Members

We recommend a tailored program for these participants. It is usually not a formal course but rather a tailored briefing or seminar, preferably conducted during a "town hall" meeting. These are some of the proposed content for the first three years.

For the first year of their training roadmap, the general staff members should be introduced to the fundamentals of BCM, the organisation’s BC Policy and the content of the BC Plan. It is recommended that the focus during these awareness sessions be to ensure that staff members know that their involvement and safety are planned for and taken care of during an actual disaster.

In the second year, the scope of the awareness sessions can be expanded to include their roles and responsibilities during BC Plan activation.

In the third year of the training roadmap, all the time and resources spent on ensuring that the organisation is prepared for a disaster will be wasted if lapses in judgement by staff result in the very event the organisation are trying to prevent from happening.