(Part 1 of 2)

It is almost a year since the pandemic turned the world upside down. Mostly we have come to terms we our losses and have adjusted to the changes and disruptions.  We are starting to realise that we will never go back to business or life as we knew it. The ways in which we operate, communicate, plan, execute and work have changed forever.

The immediate focus should be to consider the lessons learnt from the pandemic in order to update and improve business continuity management (BCM) programmes and practices.

BCM practitioners and professionals are overwhelmed by the demand for BCM programme reviews, assessments and roadmaps to update and improve the BCM maturity of organisations. These are all good initiatives to ensure the BCM programmes are fit for purpose and it sets a solid foundation for embedding BCM in die organisational culture.

BCM programmes typically follow an international practice or guideline (i.e. ISO 22301, Business Continuity Institute’s Good Practice Guideline) in the approach to establish, maintain and manage. As part of establishing the BCM programme a set of response plans will be developed over time. Each of these plans has a specific purpose, to enable effective response, recovery and resumption after a disruption.

During the pandemic, there was a sense of uncertainty as to which response plans need to be invoked and whether organisations need to develop scenario specific plans i.e. Pandemic response plan (or a Cyber incident response plan).

In Part 2, the different response plans will be highlighted and scenario planning insights will be shared.