James Pettigrew, Program and Project Manager
How deep are your crisis resources—the people, processes and technology used to respond during a critical incident? Are there adequate employee “backups” who understand their responsibilities with decision-making, operational changes or technology positions?
The depth of resources during a crisis event is sometimes missed in business continuity and disaster recovery planning. Most plans focus on what needs to be done to react to an event rather than on who will get it done.
I’ve written before about how critical it is to consider what should happen if a main point of contact for an important part of the business continuity and disaster recovery plan is unavailable or unable to perform their responsibilities. The questions I posed then still merit attention: Is the backup thoroughly trained? Has the backup performed his or her responsibilities during a live drill, or at least a tabletop exercise?
Yet, proper resource depth goes beyond human resources. For every decision-maker who gives the okay to implement a business continuity and disaster recovery process plan, there must be two-to-three individuals who also have a firm understanding of the business and potential resource impact of carrying out the plan.
Once the plan is put in motion, certain resources will be unavailable until the pieces needed for getting the business up and running again are in place. Regular review of the organization’s crisis response processes will keep team members up-to-date on what resources are available, what may be lost during a crisis event and how to address challenges in business continuity and reduced capabilities.
I believe in the group approach for any technical resource, as it provides proper coverage around the critical areas needed to run the business at certain levels. It may mean cross-training in specialties like restoring backups, installing software, establishing connections to cloud resources or assisting staff in getting back to work in a temporary space until all business is back to normal. However, not investing in these competencies could place the organization in a precarious situation should its crisis response be unprepared for technical contingencies.
If you have not considered the importance of crisis resource depth, you may be creating failure points in your ability to respond to or recover from a crisis event. Many organizations may not have the resource depth I’ve covered above. If this is the case, feel free to contact Your EAP for a consultation on plan review.
