Frequently Asked Questions

Business Continuity

1. What is an incident?
2. What do I need to do?
3. How do I do that ?
4. What is a business continuity plan?
5. Why should I use a business continuity plan?
6. Does a small company need a business continuity plan?
7.How should a company communicate a business continuity plan to its
employees?
8. What systems should be in place to assist with a fast recovery programme?
9. Where can I find out more about business continuity?
10. What is the 'Expecting the Unexpected' Booklet?
11. How long will it take to create a business continuity plan?
12. What will it cost to create a business continuity plan?

1. What is an incident?

An incident is an event that disrupts your work, from flu epidemic to fire

A major incident may last a long time and affect buildings and people as well as equipment, communications, and services.

A minor incident may only affect single services such as electrical supply, IT equipment or telephones.

Prepare a business continuity plan!

3.How do I do that?

Step 1 – Analyse your business
What is essential to the running of your business?

Step 2 – Assess the risks
What is the likelihood of an incident occurring? What type of incident?
What or who will it affect?

Step 3- Develop your strategy
This mean start writing your plan, covering the areas your risk assessment has identified.

Step 4 – Develop and keep developing your plan
When doing this involve as nay people as you can. This ensures awareness, ownership, and contribution to a good sound plan.

Step 5 – Rehearse the plan
To make sure it all works and employees know their roles and responsibilities test what you have written down and amend it after the testing and exercising.

For a self-assessment tool, you can down load information from:

London prepared web site
Business Continuity Institute web site

Details are available under the Links section of this website.

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4. What is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan should be a set of instructions of what to do, and what not to do, at the time of a crisis. It is often created by someone, or a group of people, who know how the whole business is run.
Business continuity is about thinking ahead and planning for a crisis that could affect your business, making sure that it can survive. In short, it is about ensuring that a crisis does not become a disaster.

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5. Why should I use a business continuity plan?

Experience shows that businesses are far more likely to survive a disaster if they have thought about it in advance, and planned accordingly.
Banks, investors, insurers, customers and suppliers will take a company that has a business continuity plan much more seriously. Business continuity plans build employee confience. Employees will appreciate the fact that the business is doing all it can to protect their safety and place of work.

In the end, business continuity is about responsible management. It makes a business a safer place to work and contributes to financial stability.

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6. Does a small company need a business continuity plan?

Yes, even a sole trader is advised to have systems in place to be able to continue his/her work in case of fraud, theft, sabotage, flooding, fire, IT and utility failures and terrorist attacks.

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7. How should a company communicate a business continuity plan to its employees?

Without due alarm. The plan should be communicated to all employees in an easy to understand, accessible format that emphasises the company's commitment to business continuity management.

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8. What systems should be in place to assist with a fast recovery programme?

It is very important to focus on keeping back-ups and copies of documents off-site, as well as having a plan that focuses on your mission critical activities and caters for an alternative site to work from.

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9. Where can I find out more about business continuity?

See the Business Continuity Links webpage, please click here.

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10. What is the 'Expecting the Unexpected' Booklet?

Expecting the Unexpected: Business Continuity in an uncertain world
This booklet is a new simple booklet, based on BCI principles that aims to provide a checklist and useful ideas for BCM.
Download the booklet. Please click here (552 KB PDF)
The booklet is published by Business Continuity Institute (BCI), London First, and National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO)

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11. How long will it take to create a business continuity plan?

It should not take too long to create your first plan but obviously this will depend on the complexity of your business. The smaller the size of your business, generally the less time it is likely to take.

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12. What will it cost to create a business continuity plan?

The cost will be relatively little and at the end of the exercise you will have a plan to protect your business. The benefits of having a working continuity plan will out-weigh any small expenditure.

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