Stage 3: Developing your response
Once you've decided on your strategies, it's important to understand how:
- to determine the impact of an incident on your business
- you'll know to activate your plan and when to do it
Being ready to activate your BCM plan
There are many considerations at this stage that are best identified in advance.
These are:
- how you'll understand the scale of disruption to the business - especially being able to determine the impact on critical functions
- who will decide to activate the BCM plan, who will assist them and what specific roles and responsibilities they’d fulfil
- what resources are needed to maintain critical activities in an emergency, and how you'll make these available
- who needs to communicate with staff, customers, suppliers, partners, regulators, investors and other stakeholders
Action planning
You can now write a scheduled action plan for use in an emergency.
This must concentrate on the critical 'must-do' activities rather than preferred or easy tasks.
As a minimum, it should cover:
- clear decision-making process identifying decision-makers and deputies
- communications strategy identifying who to contact and by whom, including a list of key contacts
- prioritised recovery process, including completion timescales
- actions and activities for the continued operation of the business, identifying the individuals responsible for each, resources needed and where to get hem
Guidance and template documents
We’ve created some guidance and templates documents to help you complete a BCM plan.
View the documents:
Business Continuity Management Plan template
Business Continuity Management Plan guidance
Business Continuity Management Plan guidance for an emergency grab bag
Business Continuity Management Plan 20-minute checklist
Business Continuity Management Plan emergency site plan template
Business Continuity Management Plan Guidance for an emergency grab bag
Contains essential information and equipment for responding to an emergency. Keep:
- one on each site to take with you when evacuating a building
- one off-site for responding to an incident outside normal working hours
Business Continuity Management Plan emergency site plan
Details the locations of key items on your business premises, such as utility supply shut-off switches and hazardous materials. It’s especially useful for emergency services attending an incident.