A bumpy landing

I've just finished doing one of those straightforward "I'll knock that off in a day or two" type

Andy Osborne
Consultancy Director, Acumen
Author of Practical Business
Continuity Management

jobs. It only took me seven days. Over a period of four and a half weeks. The last stint used up pretty much the whole of my weekend. As a result, I now have the backache from hell, serious hockey withdrawal symptoms and a bad case of boarder's knee. That's floorboarder's, rather than snowboarder's, knee by the way - I don't think they suffer particularly from sore knees, although most of them must suffer terrible frostbite of the derrière from all that sitting in the snow, but that's another story (see "

Ski boots and celery").

Anyway, the straightforward little job in question was replacing the floorboards on the landing at chez Oz. It's not as if it's a big landing or anything. Neither should it have been particularly tricky. Yes, there are a few corners and a couple of nooks and crannies but nothing particularly complicated, particularly for the seasoned DIY virtuoso I modestly consider myself to be.

No, the problem was that someone had been there before me. Several someones by the look of it. Our house is a hundred-and-something years old, so I sort of realised that some alterations had been done over the intervening years. In fact I've come across several examples of previous owners' "improvements" as we've worked our way through it making our own alterations - most of which slowed things down or bumped up the costs, or both. So why I thought this little job would be any different is beyond me.

 

I'll spare you the anoraky details - suffice it to say that most of the time was spent putting right someone else's efforts, which exercised my plumbing, electrical, joinery and metalwork skills as well as my general DIY ability. And my sanity.

 

I don't know about you, but in my experience it's all too often a similar story when updating someone else's business continuity plans. What should be a straightforward job turns into a monster undertaking because someone without the necessary skills or experience has had a go.

 

One of the most common findings is that the plans contain all sorts of "stuff" - anything and everything even vaguely related to business continuity that the well-meaning but inexperienced DIY-er could find and has enthusiastically, though somewhat misguidedly, pounced on in a frenzy of copying and pasting. The result is a document filled with all kinds of superfluous padding, from fire evacuation procedures to standard operating procedures to the contents of the yellow pages.

 

More important, however, is the usual accompanying lack of any proper analysis or strategy, let alone any training or awareness raising or exercising and testing. In other words, the business continuity equivalent of the useless and, in some cases, slightly dangerous contents of the void under my landing floorboards.

 

DIY can sometimes save money in the short term. Longer term, however, it can be quite costly to put right someone else's mistakes. There are, therefore, occasions when it's sensible to get some expert help rather than simply having a go yourself.

 

My next straightforward DIY job involves more floorboarding - this time the bathroom. Still, It's not a huge bathroom - I should be able to knock that off in two or three days tops!
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Practice makes perfect or scenario-based BC Plans are a waste of time!

Your BC Eye
Donna Monkhouse

We are all familiar with the expression “practice makes perfect” and never has a truer word been spoken.  Practising is all about rehearsing again and again until you have mastered the role you’ve been assigned; but, it is also about improving your behaviour.

Today’s BCAW 2013 webinar of my choice was the one on exercising, or rather scenario-based exercising, which was presented by Andy Osborne MBCI, Associate Consultant at Clearview-Continuity.

The first question Andy raised was, why bother with exercises?   

Well, the short answer is that it takes a lot of time, effort, resources and money to write a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and if you want to see a return on this investment, you need to make sure it works.  Simply having a BCP in place will not save your business; what will save it is having the right people with the right capability to deliver that plan, and the only way to develop that capability is through practising or as Business Continuity professionals prefer to say, through exercising. 

So should a BCP be based on particular scenarios? 

Well according to Andy, “scenario-based plans are a waste of time”.  What Andy was essentially saying with this somewhat controversial statement (at least at first glance)  is that there is no way that we can think of every possible scenario nor can we plan for every conceivable type of incident that we may be faced with at some point in the future.  More often than not, old Murphy’s Law will kick in and you will find yourself either faced with the one scenario you hadn’t thought of or the scenario you had in your head pans out quite differently in reality.  What is critical here is not to plan for every scenario, but to plan for any scenario and the way you do this is to build the capability within your organization to respond to any incident by getting the people involved to rehearse again and again until they know their lines off by heart (speaking in theatrical terms of course)!

What about scenario-based exercises?

Scenario-based exercises, on the other hand are not a waste of time but can be very valuable in terms of emphasising issues that no one had thought of; highlighting your strengths and your weaknesses (remember, you are only as strong as the weakest link); clarifying responsibilities; testing your communications and ultimately, helping you to improve and enhance your response capability. 

Which scenarios should you select?

It doesn’t really matter what type of scenario you select, but what it does need to be is credible, engaging and realistic and it needs to meet and reflect your objectives and the key issues you are hoping to address through the exercise.  So when planning an exercise, don’t start the process by trying to think of some great theatrical spectacular, focus in the first instance on your objectives and issues.  You can make up the most exciting, mind-blowingly creative and fictitious incident, but if it doesn’t meet your objectives then it will have little value and will really be a complete waste of time!

When it comes to facilitation of a scenario-based exercise, there are many approaches that can be taken.  It could be as simple as a desk-top exercise where you gather everyone around the table to talk them through the plan or even walk them through it; or it could be a bigger event involving role play and fake journalists, doctored photos and staged radio broadcasts. 

The key observation made by Andy based on his extensive experience in the field, is that what you do will and should be decided by the people you need to involve inasmuch as some people will feel comfortable with role play; others will feel totally out of their comfort zone; some will react well and others badly.  You need to understand the composition of your Incident Management Team, the intricacies of their personalities as well as having (if possible) some insight into past history and previous experiences and traumas so that you can at least make some kind of pre-judgement as to how they might react to certain scenarios and whether they are the right men or women for the job.

 You also need to consider whether they can work well together as a team and whether indeed they know each other well enough to perform effectively as a unit, after all, you are only as good as the sum of your parts.   

Both approaches of course have their value.  If you decide for the role play (which does not involve dressing up in fancy costume), you can make this as realistic as you like, just be sure to be aware of the fact that different people will react in different ways.  Certainly, if you wish to include a death of a colleague in your scenario, it is wise not to use real people’s names but safer to stick to a fictitious name instead; using real names can have terrible emotional consequences for some of the players on your stage.  How realistic you can make it, will of course depend on how realistic you can afford to make it, but the sky really is the limit here.  You can involve multiple teams and use multiple locations in your scenario; there is no right or wrong.  Andy did, however, strongly advise anyone planning to use multiple teams to first carefully consider which teams to involve at what point otherwise you will have people involved with nothing to do for long periods of time, which destroys the ‘engaging’ element of your scenario and will result in loss of interest and loss of ownership and ultimately spell out a miserable failure.

So how do you get the most out of your exercising?  Here Andy’s top tips:

1. Plan and prepare for your exercise properly
2. Think about the management and the coordination of the exercise
3. Use experienced facilitators
4. Develop an exercise plan and schedule
5. Ensure you have clear objectives and measurable success criteria
6. Brief all participants including the facilitators in advance as well as you can or should
7. Have some independent observers on the side line as they can provide excellent, impartial feedback post-event
8. Create and use post exercise critique forms and log books to capture key information and observations
9. Write a report and follow up on the report’s recommendations as part of your lessons learned (after all exercising is also about improving your capability)
10. Finally de-brief everyone who was involved and make sure all loose ends are firmly tied up

At this point, Andy reminded us of the 5 Ps (or 6 Ps used in the army, but we won’t mention the sixth one here!): Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance – good planning breeds success; success breeds confidence, confidence in your plan, in your team and ultimately in your organization to withstand any scenario! 

The final question that Andy put on the table was when to exercise? 

The Business Continuity Management Lifecycle tells us to exercise and test at the end of the process, but we could exercise during strategy definition or maybe during the implementation process.  In fact, Andy went one step further and made the brave suggestion that maybe the Lifecycle should begin with exercising as this is guaranteed to make people sit up in their seats and pay attention; it will highlight the key issues; it will emphasise the importance of Business Continuity and it could be key to getting buy-in especially at the top, which as we know can be more than difficult! 

This webinar certainly provided me with ample food for thought and hopefully you have learned something too by reading this blog!

If you missed Andy’s presentation, you can catch up on it here >>

BCI Physical Workshop

Would you like to find out more about how to plan and run an exercise programme or how you can invigorate or inject new life into an existing programme? 

The BCI is running a workshop dedicated to this topic in Manchester this month:
 

BCM Exercising Planning Workshops

Dates:

Wednesday, 24th April 2013: Planning and Running an Exercise

Thursday, 25th April 2013:Invigorating your Exercise Programme

Location: Manchester

Type: Physical (Delegates can choose to attend both or just one of the sessions)

BOOK NOW >>

BCI Member Rates apply.

An Icy Crisis

Andy Osborne
Consultancy Director, Acumen
Author of Practical Business
Continuity Management

For those of you who know me, you may remember a blog I wrote about the trials and tribulations of working from home during a recent snowy period. What I didn’t mention was that the hassle of trying to work from home amid the Osborne menagerie was compounded by a small domestic crisis - the dreaded frozen pipes, which meant no running water in the kitchen for three days. And, more seriously, a non-functioning dishwasher and ice-machine in the freezer that couldn’t refill itself. I like to think that I cope reasonably well with most of the things that life throws at me, but washing up by hand and warm gin and tonic both come under the heading of “crisis” as far as I’m concerned.

 

The daft thing is that it happened last winter too. Only it was worse then because we ended up with burst pipes. And two indoor water features - a small waterfall cascading from our kitchen ceiling and a rather pretty fountain in the garage. So once I’d cleared up and repaired the offending leaks, I did a quick bit of risk management and set to insulating the pipes properly.

 

The trouble was that it seems I didn’t quite finish the job. I don’t remember why – hardly surprising really as I don’t actually remember not finishing. Presumably I found something more pressing or more interesting to do. Or maybe it was because it wasn’t much fun crawling around in the roof space above the kitchen. Anyway, I ended up up there again this year, squeezing into ridiculously small nooks and crannies with various bits of insulation. And jolly unpleasant it was too. The main problem was that I’m nowhere near bendy enough, and I never thought that, at the impressive height of 5’7″, I’d be too tall for anything. I ended up with a cricked neck and an aching back but, thankfully, no burst pipes.

 

But I fear I may be rambling. The point is that if I’d actually implemented the risk mitigation measures I identified last year properly, I’d have averted this latest crisis and wouldn’t have been in the predicament that I found myself in. Which isn’t all that dissimilar to the risk management efforts of some organisations that I’ve come across over the years.

 

The problem is that implementing risk mitigation measures often involves some effort or expense, or both. And quite often there’s something more pressing or more interesting to do. As a result, the mitigation measures are sometimes poorly implemented or not completed, or not monitored for their effectiveness. But the bottom line is that, to be effective, mitigation measures have to actually be done, rather than just written down in a risk register and forgotten about.

 

The second point, from a business continuity point of view is that, my own personal crisis happened during a particularly busy period work-wise, with some end of year deadlines looming. And my attention was somewhat diverted from these by my own problems. Many business continuity plans make no allowance for this and just assume that people will forget all about their own personal issues and be 100% available and focused on the recovery efforts of the organisation in question. I put it to you that this assumption may need a re-think.

 

A gin and tonic with ice!

 

I’m pleased to report that during the two subsequent cold spells our pipes remained unfrozen and the water continued to flow. And, most importantly, the washing up mountain has remained under control and the ice has been there for us when we needed it. Cheers!

Visit Andy's Blog >>
Follow Andy on Twitter @AndyatAcumen >>

Evaluating Threats as part of Business Continuity

John Bartlett CBCI, DBCI

My first article ‘An introduction to Business Continuity’ introduced Business Continuity (BCM) related risks and outlined different types of risk that we and our organisations can experience. Risks are unavoidable; how we assess these, decide which ones to deal with and the level of risk we are prepared to accept (our risk appetite), is entirely within our control.

Whole industries have been established and libraries of books written on Risk Management. Often risk and risk management means different things to different people and industries.

The Ramblings of a travelling BC Consultant

Andy Osborne,
Consultancy Director, Acumen
Author of Practical Business
Continuity Management
 

Last week I paid, quite literally, a flying visit to Dublin to meet a prospective client. The trip presented me with two opportunities. First and foremost, the possibility of some new business, but also the rare opportunity to sample “the black stuff” (Guiness) in its native environment.

 

For those of you who know me, I do like a nice cup of tea and, in my more relaxed moments, I’m quite partial to the odd gin and tonic. I also enjoy a glass or two of red wine every now and again. But just occasionally, I’m not averse to a pint of Guinness. And, as I discovered on a previous trip to Dublin some years ago, the Guinness there beats the proverbials off the Guinness in England. I don’t know what it is that makes it so much better. Maybe it’s brewed differently; maybe it’s the water; or maybe, like the French with their wine, the Irish keep the best stuff for themselves (and wo can blame them?) - perhaps someone can tell me. Anyway, it was an opportunity that was just too good to miss.

 

My meeting finished at about 1:30pm so, after a brief stroll round the city, during which I thankfully managed not to bump into the hen party that shared my flight in – not that i have anything against them per se, it’s just that the fifteen or twenty “ladies” with the words “on it til we vomit” emblazoned on their t-shirts sort of signalled their intent, as well as being just a bit scary – I selected a local hostelry in which to have lunch. I ordered my meal and asked for a pint of Guinness, now feeling really quite excited at the prospect. But in one of those “I don’t believe it” moments I was well and truly flabbergasted when the barman told me that they didn’t serve Guinness here! Victor Meldrew eat your heart out! I’d just walked past about two dozen pubs, hotels and other establishments advertising Guinness and I’d managed to walk into what is probably the only bar in Dublin that doesn’t sell the stuff!

Now I thought I’d made a pretty reasonable assumption but I’d quite clearly got it hopelessly wrong.

 

That’s the trouble with assumptions, of course…

 

Like the one about all of our key people being available when we need them; or the one about the IT recovery working even though it’s never been tested; or the willingness of our people to up sticks and relocate at a moment’s notice and work from some remote location for weeks on end; or that local office accommodation with all of the necessary equipment and telecomm’s circuits will be available within a few days; or that the media won’t talk about us if we don’t talk to them. The list goes on.

 

So I finished my lunch and got a taxi back to the airport, a good few hours earlier than I needed to, assuming I’d be able to find somewhere quiet to work – like, perhaps the cafe in the arrivals hall that I’d sat in for an hour when I first arrived. How wrong I was. I know that Dublin is a popular destination for stag and hen weekends but I’d sort of assumed that the numerous groups of stags and hens flying in might at least wait until they got into town before they got completely drunk and disorderly. That, of course, perfectly illustrates the problem with assumption.

Visit Andy's Blog >>
Follow Andy on Twitter @AndyatAcumen >>

Starting a Business Continuity Programme

John Bartlett CBCI,DBCI

The benefits of implementing Business Continuity can be far reaching and although they are not always tangible, amongst other things they help reduce the exposure to risks, provide information for informed decisions and provide confidence to customers and stakeholders. Business Continuity Management (BCM) is about ensuring the essential services and activities can keep running or can be restarted following a disruption. After all, Insurance for incidents may provide a financial safety net, but it will not win back lost customers who go to your competitors; backups and alternative data centres are great for your systems and applications, but do not provide a location for your business to work, or a plan to recover your business activities. So how do we go about putting BCM in place?

 

BCM Programme management is central to the whole Business Continuity Lifecycle (as shown in the diagram below) and fundamental for successfully implementing Business Continuity as it defines, controls and manages the approach and its implementation; ensuring it achieves the desired objectives.

 

(Source: ISO 22313 - Societal security — Business continuity management systems — Guidance)

BCM Programme Management is established through 5 key components: 

An Introduction to Business Continuity by John Bartlett CBCI, DBCI

John Bartlett CBCI, DBCI

Business Continuity is the implementation and management of a set of business practices that provide on-going resilience and recovery capabilities for the essential activities and infrastructure to keep an organisation working and providing its necessary services.

 

This is not a new concept; Business Continuity was established in the late-80’s following on from the 1980’s technology boom, the development of IT Disaster Recovery practices and realisation that the business activities also needed to be recovered. Since its establishment, Business Continuity has achieved world-wide recognition as a core management activity for good corporate governance and risk management that complements, supports and enhances other business functions and helps to ensure informed, risk based decisions can be made.

 

When talking to Executives and Senior Managers in organisations, the reaction and comments I often receive (in Oman and other countries) are ones such as ‘These major events rarely happen’, ‘It’ll never happen to me’, ‘But we have a backup data centre’ or ‘That’s not my responsibility’. More often than not these comments emphasise a lack of understanding about Business Continuity and the role it plays in managing and protecting an organisation. Every Executive and Senior Manager in an organisation has a duty and responsibility to ensure risks are being managed appropriately and effectively. The question therefore, should not be ‘Will it happen to me’, but more ‘Have we considered and evaluated this risk properly,

What is business continuity (BC)?

Donna Monkhouse, Your BC Eye

As we head towards Business Continuity Awareness Week (BCAW), the BCI’s annual global awareness raising campaign for business continuity (BC), it makes sense to begin with a simple question:  What is business continuity?

If you look at the main BCI website and take a look at their official BCI Statement, they talk about their vision to promote the art and science of business continuity worldwide.  As a discipline, business continuity can seem like a complicated subject, but actually when we strip it back to its bare essentials, we discover that business continuity is really very straightforward and founded upon good common sense.

In a nutshell, business continuity is about taking responsibility for your business and enabling it to stay on course whatever storms it is forced to weather.   In true war time spirit, it is about “keeping calm and carrying on”.

Business Continuity Awareness Week (BCAW) 2013 – BC for the risks you can see and the ones you can’t

Donna Monkhouse, Your BC Eye

Business Continuity Awareness Week (BCAW) 2013 – BC for the risks you can see and the ones you can’t
 

18^th to 22^nd March 2013
 

The theme

In today’s world of economic, social and political uncertainty, organizations are confronted with an ever-increasing range of risks to deal with. But there are risks we can see and then there are those we can’t, the so-called “black swans” that swim up on us from nowhere, the high-profile, high-impact, hard-to-predict and rare events. Now more than ever, organizations are looking for a solution to help them manage both types of risk.  That solution is Business Continuity (BC).

But what is BCAW?

BCAW is an annual global event that is facilitated by the BCI and is a key vehicle in raising the awareness of BC as well as showcasing its value as an integrated part of every organization’s strategy.  Every year we select an over-arching theme based on our Members feedback and then build upon this throughout the week.  This year’s theme is Business Continuity for the risks you can see and the ones you can’t.

Planning for major events

Donna Monkhouse, Your BC Eye

2012 will always be synonymous with the UK staging one of the most successful ever Olympic and Paralympic Games.   Its success has become part of Britain’s legacy.  But despite the strong positivity that surrounds the smooth operation of the Games, on the planning front, there were many that complained about a state of over-preparedness, declaring that too much time and effort had been squandered on unnecessary planning. 

 

Wide-spread traffic chaos, business disruptions, terrorist attacks and a grid-locked London were all predicted, but never actually occured.   So perhaps the question we need to be asking is not whether we did too much planning, but whether the quantity and quality of the planning undertaken helped to minimise any disruptions and whether without it, we would have experienced more chaos, more incidents and a less successful hosting of this major event

COSMOTE invests in BCM culture enhancement via BCAW 2012

It really is quite important for everyone to realise that simply having a sound Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) in place and maybe a BS25999 certificate as robust evidence that your BCM arrangements are well set and maintained, is not necessarily enough.

Learning to manage the expectations of the board, constantly having to communicate what BCM does and what it doesn’t do, explaining the value or not of a certificate to an accredited organisation, often gives you the chance to really get to know the inner bits of the system you very efficiently (hopefully) managed to build, and provides valuable insights into your employee culture and risk awareness mindset.

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) has been organising for some years now the international Business Continuity Awareness week, an annual event, which aims to raise business continuity awareness within an organisation and is a great initiative to support the awareness raising activities of a BCM Manager.  BCAW provides a resourceful platform to help embed business continuity into an organisation and offers tailor-made solutions to support the delivery of awareness raising activities within organisations to help educate people on Business Continuity, Operational Risk Management, and Incident Consequence Management as well as in a general sense, Resilience.

The HR Checklist for enterprise-wide business continuity plans

Lee Glendon CBCI

Many aspects of dealing with the human side of major disruption are already covered through health and safety and crisis management procedures; however, the link between successfully dealing with these issues and business continuity objectives are often less clear. The following table details a list of questions to help understand how comprehensive your organisation’s thinking is around the subject.

• Does your plan require cross-training of staff in critical areas?
• Do you review people-related policies to consider whether they will hold up during a crisis?
• Is succession planning evident in the plan?
• Are there specific details within the plans, for example, dealing with absence levels from 15% to 50%?
• Is it clear how communication with staff will be handled? Have messages already been written for each stage of the crisis?
• If you are letting staff go, are you auditing the skills that are being lost against critical processes or assets?
• Do you have counselling arrangements in place to provide help for staff in the aftermath of an incident?
• Have you considered how you will deal with staff with special needs requirements at any disaster recovery centre or alternative site?
• Are you confident that all staff contact data, including next of kin, is current?
• Do your exercises go beyond a regular fire drill evacuation?
• Is HR involved in the organisation’s crisis management team?
• Does your plan cover common people-related impacts, such as high and extended levels of absence?
• Do you have sufficient flexibility in contracts to deal with the need for change of location, extended working hours or other changes to working terms and conditions?
• Do you have a process for locating staff to ensure that they are safe?
• Have you reviewed your travel policy to accommodate the need for flexibility during and after an incident?
• Do you regularly involve and brief staff on the organisation’s business continuity plans?
• Is there a business continuity champion within the HR function?
• Have you surveyed staff on their expectations of the company’s response to a crisis?
• Do you have a staff information line or HR incident line?
• Do you have established methods for monitoring threats and receiving government advice, for example, for pandemics?
• Have your response plans considered duty of care and reputational implications?
• Is there a consistent HR approach across all service areas or lines of business?

Scoring:

Give yourself one point for each area covered in your plan. Deduct one point if it is absent and score zero if you don’t know! How did you score overall?

0–15 points:             More thinking to be done.
16–20 points:           Good position to push towards excellence.
20+ points:               Excellent coverage of the issues

Going with a BANG!

Lorraine Darke, Executive Director BCI

Dear Reader

Please feel proud as we share with you the BCI’s BANG Award for the Corniest Cliché. Our humble blog – BCEye - is the recipient of this Award and we are thrilled.

Thrilled that since our launch a month ago thousands of you have taken the time to read our observations on business, BCM and the BCI. Thanks to the BCI London Forum for recognising BCEye, corny or not, as all publicity is good publicity. We’ve blogged on international standards, virtual workshops, due diligence, DRJ, organisational resilience and more with much more to come.

This 2012 BANG Award sits proudly alongside our 2011 Award (also for Corniest Cliché) and we already have out thinking caps on to ensure that we can make it a hat trick for 2013.

Sad to note, however, that the 2012 Award is smaller than the 2011 Award and we hope this doesn’t reflect that BANG will be going out with a whimper.

If you would like to become part of our blogging community please contact donna.monkhouse@thebci.org

The meaning of letters in the world of business continuity

Donna Monkhouse - Your BC Eye

AMBCI, CBCI, FBCI all sounds impressive, but what exactly are you getting for your money when you recruit a qualified BCM professional with these letters after their name?

As a newcomer to the BCI and the world of business continuity, part of my company induction was spent with the membership team, and it was here that I was subject to an avalanche of acronyms that engulfed me with so much confusion that it threatened to suffocate 'my little grey cells' as they fought to digest and assimilate the coded messages that were winging their way to me.  This is my attempt to cut through the letters and shed some light on what these all stand for from a practical point of view.  

My key question is: what sort of skills and competencies can you expect if you hire an MBCI or FBCI etc. into your business?

Well let’s begin at the beginning with Affiliate Membership just because it seems like a good place to start.   For someone who is genuinely interested in business continuity or is possibly considering embarking on a career as a BCM practitioner, this is the best starting point.  Affiliates quite often acquire their Affiliate Membership to the BCI as a spin off from attendance at a relevant training course.   They may well have experience in BCM, but generally speaking they are not  yet qualified enough to take the examination that leads to statutory membership and any experience they may have is usually not certified. 

Now let’s move on to the different variations on a theme of the ‘BCI’s.  Anyone with the letters ‘BCI’ in their title, be it CBCI, MBCI or AMBCI or indeed FBCI all have some knowledge and competence across six key skills areas.  How much will depend on a variety of factors, which I will explain later.

So what are these key skills?

1.     BCM Policy and Programme Management, which means that they will have the skills and knowledge to establish appropriate policies and procedures for BCM in your organisation as well as set up, implement and manage a BCM Programme. 

2.     Embedding BCM in the Organisation’s Culture, which means they will be able to create a programme of activities that will help raise awareness of BCM with your staff and thus achieve corporate buy-in to BCM, which is critical if it is going to work.

3.     Understanding the Organisation, which means they are able to carry out a Business Impact Analysis, including threat evaluation risk assessments and mitigation measures. 

4.      Determining Business Continuity Strategy, which is in itself self-explanatory really.

5.     Developing and Implementing a BCM Response, which covers things like emergency response procedures, business continuity planning, including recovery and communication with both internal and external stakeholders.

6.     Exercising, Maintaining and Reviewing BCM, which means that they will be familiar with planning and coordinating walkthroughs and exercises to ensure your staff knows what to do when disaster strikes.

These are often referred to as the ‘basic skills of business continuity’.  However, how much experience and knowledge your people will have, how skilled and competent they will be, will depend on a variety of factors, including the number of years of practical experience they are able to evidence. 

The next step on the business continuity ladder is the CBCI, the Certificate of the BCI.  Individuals who hold this certificate are qualified across all of the six skills areas in line with the Good Practice Guidelines.  They may have some practical working experience in the field, but their experience hasn’t been officially assessed or proven by the BCI.

Moving onto our Associate Members (AMBCI), this is someone who too is qualified in the basic skills of business continuity, but unlike the CBCI they do have proven practical workplace experience (at least one year to be precise) in a business continuity role, which has been properly assessed.  

The ‘Specialist’ on the other hand, that is our SBCI, is the exception to the six skills rule.   As the title implies they tend to be specialists in one particular area only.  They may well have some knowledge across the six core skills, but generally speaking they are only master of one.  In order to achieve ‘Specialist’ status, you need to have worked in that area in that capacity.  Specialists have at least 2 years’ proven experience and assessed practical workplace experience in their area of specialism.  They will also either hold some form of certification from a professional body that is relevant to their specialism or be a member of a relevant professional body.

As we move further up the ‘food chain’ to the level of MBCI, that is Member with a capital ‘M’ as I was told by our Membership Manager, we once again have an individual who is certified in the basics of business continuity, but is proven to be more experienced with at least three’ years’ practical working experience in a business continuity role.  This is where we start to see some real value add to the organisation in terms of the length and breadth of the skills and competencies they can bring to the table. 

And finally to the crème de la crème, FBCI – this lovely “fellow” simply has it all - at least six years’ proven and assessed practical workplace experience in a Business Continuity role; at least two years’ membership with the BCI at either SBCI or MBCI level, as well as enjoying a reputation as a Thought Leader in BCM either through the publication of his/her work in one of the leading industry journals or as an active contributor to the BCI.   Fellows are a rare breed and in fact there are only 108 FBCIs out of a total of just over 7,000 BCI members, so pretty much an elitist group.

And finally, we need to understand how easy or not it is to get from one level to the other.  It is not, as it may seem an automatic progression, but behind it sits a rigorous assessment process that tests and proves the skills, knowledge and competencies of all individuals that wish to move up through the BCI Membership ranks.

So next time you are looking to recruit a BCM professional, remember your letters and know that you are getting technically competent and quality assured experts!

The Virtues of Virtual Workshops

Donna Monkhouse Your BC Eye

Physical workshops offer attendees a fantastic interactive, organic learning environment as well as a superb platform for networking and some great peer to peer information exchange.   You can contribute as much or as little as you like; and if you prefer, you can just simply sit quietly in the background and absorb the flow of information.   The choice is yours.

A safe haven, the physical workshop seems like the perfect setting for effective learning and knowledge transfer.   It even has its quirks for its presenters, offering great scope for different types and blends of communication, ranging from verbal to visual to indeed kinesthetic interaction!  

If that is the ‘good’, what are ‘the bad and the ugly’?  Well, two simple words – time and money!   

With busy work schedules and multiple key diary commitments in place, taking a full day out of a busy working week to attend a workshop off site is not always possible, even if attendance would add real value.  And we haven’t even mentioned the cost of getting there and any possible overnight stays!

But what if the workshop came to you?  What if you could have all the same benefits without the hassles?  What if you didn’t even have to leave your desk to participate?

Well there is a way – and that way is the virtual workshop.  The virtual workshop offers similar benefits to that of a physical workshop plus a few more – you get to network with your peers and profit from the sharing of best practice; you can ‘chat’ to other delegates, ask questions through the Chair and participate in discussions and debates, you just don’t have to travel to get there and if you wanted, you could even attend wearing your pyjamas and slippers – no-one need ever know!

All this adds up to some tremendous cost savings – no travelling costs; no overnight costs.  And then there is the added bonus in that it saves time and can be attended with minimum disruption to your day, enabling you to make the best use of your time and meet critical work and diary commitments and still have some time for important professional development.  And the savings made by the organiser in terms of reduced administration and event management costs are passed directly onto the attendees in the form of reduced delegate fees.  Definitely a ‘win-win’ situation for everyone concerned.

It is easy to set up from a technological point of view, requiring only the minimum use (and understanding) of technology to get started  – internet connection, a laptop or PC and a set of headphones will suffice to link you up to your new virtual learning environment.   

The virtual workshop is a global workshop.  People can potentially attend from anywhere around the world, adding to those already great networking opportunities as you connect with people from across the international scene, rather than being restricted to people who are “within travelling distance”.

But the best bit about a virtual workshop has to be the time and money it saves you.  No need to spend a day out of the office travelling to and fro to attend; the virtual workshop offers you the chance to participate at the click of a button (or two) directly from your desk or wherever you happen to be at the time.   The power of the internet is working at full capacity here; technology is the name of the game.

So with all these virtues, it is no wonder that the BCI is making use of the available technology to bring some of its workshops directly to you with the introduction of BCI Virtual Workshops, which they have just launched.

Four great titles are already planned for 2012, starting with Communicating in a Crisis. 

Take a look here and sign up for some great debates!