Best Practices for Pandemic Resilience & Planning
Overview
Business resilience is becoming a higher prerogative for boards and senior management. An escalating sophistication of cyberattacks, intricacy in processes and IT, reliance on third parties, and data management— all these factors increase the chances for interruptions, making their impact more drastic.
Executing a mature business continuity strategy is fundamentally different from creating a business continuity plan (BCP) or the basic principles of disaster recovery (DR). Conventional business continuity has historically been focused on averting physical disruption, has been produced and tested in organizational silos, and is viewed by many organizations as a part of a compliance exercise.
The guiding principle for achieving business resilience is to prepare and adapt to emerging threats. To become resilient in the face of any threat, organizations must operationalize before, during, and after a business interruption. There are significant capabilities that organizations must build as part of their resilience strategy to help thwart disruptive events and business impacts.
Achieving business continuity maturity presents challenges: the volume of processes involved, the peculiarity of each business, and organizational buy-in. However, the business benefits go beyond managing risk and complying with regulations, contributing to a company’s unique value proposition, employee retention, and future success.
This guide explains why traditional resilience planning falls short during a pandemic, how to plan and respond differently to pandemics, and what steps business leaders need to take today.