Reading a recent business continuity article I wondered how many companies would cope with the swine flu pandemic without sufficient business continuity planning. Sure enough a bit of research around the subject showed that a lot were unprepared and that it would be hard to set up home-working solutions last minute.

Organisations should ensure that remote working and collaboration tools are ready to scale to meet higher rates of absenteeism in the event of an outbreak of Swine flu. The unfolding situation is an “indicator to pay attention” to business continuity plans.

Handling Swine flu from an IT perspective is about enabling people to continue to work together or collaborate with reduced levels of face-to-face interaction. It is imperative to have work-from-home capabilities ready for staff. Executives need to think about how they would do business if the level of face-to-face contact with customers and staff drops dramatically.

However, it is almost too late for companies without remote working tools to put them in place in time unless you appoint someone to stay on top of the issue.

Another interesting article on the subject shows how important it is to review your business continuity programme on a regular basis, especially with the swine flu pandemic getting worse.

The business impact analysis (BIA) is the cornerstone of the business continuity programme. So if you conducted one prior to developing your business continuity plans, congratulations.

However, a common mistake is to think of the BIA as a one-off exercise. It shouldn’t be. It needs to be revisited from time to time to ensure plans and strategies continue to be applicable.

So you need to periodically review the BIA (or to do one if you haven’t already!).

It may not be necessary to perform a full-blown BIA again (unless it’s been several years since the last one), but you should at least review the findings and bring it up to date.

• Think about what’s changed – the way the business is organised, movements of key staff, locations, etc;
• Check if there are any recommendations which weren’t acted upon (maybe for budgetary reasons) but which still apply;
• Review Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives;
• Confirm whether the current continuity strategies are still applicable and if not, what changes need to be made.

So, every now and again (perhaps on an annual basis), blow the dust off the BIA report and have a fresh look in light of everything that’s happened since it was written.

This was a guest article by Ritchie a business continuity expert