When constructing a business continuity plan, the process of determining how your business would function in a disaster can be a bit of a guessing game. While you can be prepared for things that are likely to happen, what about the things completely unexpected? While it’s not necessarily smart to plan excessively for the unexpected, a valuable key factor is looking to experience for answers. One part of business continuity not usually considered is talking with someone on your staff who’s lived through a disaster and witnessed business continuity in action.
Is it a good idea to listen to them and take their experiences seriously?
Asking Experienced Staff to Share Stories
Some of those past experiences with disasters may be from some of your senior staff who lived through infamous hurricanes, earthquakes, or any other calamity. CIO.com says these people are usually willing to share their stories and tell about the experiences they went through. They should be included when your entire staff meets to put together a business continuity plan. In fact, the team behind your continuity plan should take notes as those people tell their stories. Those experienced staff stories may have a few valuable tips to help you deal better with the unexpected.
Scoping Out Tips from the Past
Even if that staff member lived through a disaster years ago, finding out how a business managed to get through it all should be just as applicable today. You can compare the technology back then to what’s available today and demonstrate how much easier it can be now. However, there may be certain disaster scenarios that technology can’t always immediately help. Those situations can lead to more timeless tips, like creating a disaster plan for employees if they’re stuck at home.
Coming Up With Offbeat or Clever Ideas
When dealing with unexpected situations, finding out offbeat tips that the employee used in a business continuity plan can be just as valuable as the practical ideas. Hopefully you can find more than one experienced employee so you can gather numerous ideas implemented in the far or recent past. Sometimes the most offbeat ideas will sound awkward at first, yet be very helpful when all the proactive steps taken during disasters don’t apply.
Have all of these tools at the ready, because disasters continue to bring situations that nobody can predict. As for your main continuity plan, let Continuity Centers bring true expertise to all your business disaster planning, including your disaster recovery.
Contact us and we’ll bring you everything you need from a business audit to data backup. We also provide workgroup recovery centers as alternative locations when your main business site is destroyed. Regardless of our own expert plans, we’ll let you listen to your experienced employees since experience is going to matter in preparing for things from left field.