Technology has made it possible to keep machines up and running after a disaster, but you need to ensure that your employees can work efficiently. As part of your business continuity plan, you should incorporate information access, recovery, and event preparation as much as possible into your daily activities.
In Summary:
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Prepare for contingencies by doing a business-impact analysis and determining where people might be after a disaster.
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Set up backup communication systems such as toll-free numbers and Web sites hosted in other regions
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Consider how laptops, virtual private networks, and even thumb drives can keep employees productive no matter their location
Hurricane Katrina survivor Jeff Van Houten will never look at disaster preparation the same way again. As the senior vice president of IT for Parish National Bank, a midsize bank with 15 branches in 10 cities in the New Orleans area, he chose not to evacuate during the August 2005 storm so that he could help employees and restore the bank's services.
The hurricane hit on a Sunday evening. Four Parish branches were back online the following Wednesday, and 13 branches had been restored within a week and a half, thanks to hard work from the IT staff and a lot of redundant systems and power supplies. Now, Van Houten worries less about the computer systems and more about the people who run them. Parish had always installed generators in its branches, but now any new building or lease also will include such amenities as shower facilities as well as some extra space for employees to spend the night if necessary.
Van Houten's philosophy represents a shift in thinking among IT professionals: an increased focus on workforce continuity versus business continuity. Advanced networking technologies, such as IP-based systems, make mirroring and replicating easier and cheaper than ever before. However, it doesn't matter if the computers are running if there's no one there to use them.
How do you ensure that your employees can do their jobs no matter where they are? That's a different challenge, but with readily available answers.
Analyze job roles and designate facility backups
It's impossible to know what kind of disruption will affect your business. It may be as localized as a fire, as regional as a snowstorm, or as widespread as a pandemic. Regardless, you have to get employees thinking about what they do and where it fits into the company's core business strategy. Most people believe they're indispensable, but you have to dispassionately ask them to rank their responsibilities according to their importance — that is, what duties are mission-critical, and what can the business survive without, at least temporarily?
Grant Thornton, a consulting firm for midsize companies, recommends that when doing such an impact analysis, consider what it would cost your company on a daily basis if it couldn't fulfill certain obligations. Such quantitative measurements will help clarify which job tasks are most important and help employees focus their efforts during a crisis.
Next, consider where employees might congregate if your primary facility became damaged or inaccessible. (Setting up alternative in-person meeting places is also important when there is limited or no ability for managers to e-mail or telephone their staffs.) For instance, it may seem likely that a preponderance of employees will end up in the next county simply because they have family there. By making such predictions, you can enter into so-called "mutual aid" agreements with similar businesses, in which the organizations commit to help the others during an emergency by lending facilities.
You might choose to find a good partner first and then make that the designated location for employees to congregate. Bob Goszka, a senior consultant with Grant Thornton's Business Advisory Services Group, even recommends finding a restaurant or catering service ahead of time. "Not having to worry about food and shelter helps employees focus on the task at hand," he says. "It also shows that you're supporting them, and that helps morale."
Determine communications methods that can hold up in a disaster
One of the biggest challenges post-disaster is communication — finding out where your people are and how they are doing. Anyone who has kept track of recent natural disasters, from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to the 2005 South Asia earthquake to Hurricane Katrina, knows that you can't rely on any one method of communication. Sometimes cell phones work when land lines don't and vice versa. However, more reliable technologies, such as satellite-based telephones, can be expensive.
How to maintain communications after damage to public infrastructure
Frequently after a regional disaster, local land lines are clogged but people can still call outside of the region. Set up a toll-free number with a voice-mail system where employees can receive instructions.
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Set up a password-protected, employee-only Web site so that if employees can get online, they can also get updates.
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Institute systems so that, wherever possible under the circumstances, groups of employees report to managers, and managers to one executive. This provides chief officers an accurate count of employees
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Finally, consider how employees might still work if they are unable to get into your facilities or travel to an alternate location. Deploying laptops instead of desktops is one method. Another is to use flash-memory drives, which these days have a capacity of about a gigabyte and can store crucial applications, notes Debra Dinnocenzo, president of VirtualWorks, a consulting firm focusing on enabling virtual workforces whose clients include Aetna, Ford, and Harley-Davidson. Distribute "thumb drives" for employees to store in a secure place at home, so that they have the applications necessary to download data from a backup system, she says.
Keeping employees productive during stressful times is difficult but important, say experts. The companies that return to productivity the quickest are the ones that will retain their customers — and perhaps get an edge over their less-prepared competitors.
Make preparedness part of the daily routine
Too often companies delay business-continuity preparations, or they focus on them so infrequently that when a problem occurs, no one remembers the drill. Experts recommend incorporating disaster-preparation tasks into regular operations.
Here are tips:
In each department, managers and their employees should discuss what they would need to do their jobs during a disruption. Then take 15 minutes to have each department report its findings in a staff meeting.
Cross-train employees. In a crisis, people may be dispersed over a wide area and unable to get to the facility where they work. To ensure that you have knowledgeable people wherever they are, instruct them in other responsibilities. For instance, train marketing staff how to handle sales requests, or teach cashiers how to stock shelves.
Examine whether your current procedures are intuitive enough for others to handle on-the-fly. Diana L. McClure, a vice president at the Tampa, Fla.-based Institute for Business and Home Safety, asks, "Are your files named in a consistent and recognizable way so that anyone can figure out what's in them?"
Periodically conduct drills where employees do their jobs without electricity. "Just because you don't have telecommunications doesn't mean you can't operate," says Jeff Van Houten, senior vice president of IT for Parish National Bank of New Orleans. He recommends storing flashlights, paper, pencils, and a printout of procedures in easy-to-find locations.
Howard Baldwin is a Sunnyvale, California-based contributing writer to the Microsoft Midsize Business Center. His work has appeared in CIO, Optimize, and InfoWorld.
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