Key Takeaways From BCAW 2020

Given the fallout from COVID-19, BCAW 2020 was arguably more important, relevant and far-reaching than ever before, particularly given that so many organisations are in the middle of re-opening of their offices and planning how best to enable the safe return to work of their employees.  We are proud therefore that our CEO & Founder, Andrew Lawton, was asked to present the high profile, “How to Successfully Manage the Return to Work” Webinar as part of Business Continuity Awareness Week.

The week was filled with insights from across industry.  This blog contains a roundup of the most pertinent topics raised and discussed during the week.

  1. Working from home is here to stay for a very long time, so equal effort should be put into planning for a safe, effective, and resilient home-working strategy as is put into the Return to Work effort. In practice this means ensuring home-workers can work safely and in line with legislation and company policy.  Their environment should be fit-for-purpose and working from home should form part of updated Operational Resilience planning.
  2. Forecasting the likelihood and impact of disruption events forms a crucial part of risk mitigation. However, risk, by its very nature, is unpredictable and often the unexpected happens. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated this to devastating effect, causing widespread disruption across the globe, forcing organisations to take steps to prepare for the unexpected and update their stance on Operational Resilience.
  3. How organisations communicate in a flexible and reliable manner during “return to normal working” while also maintaining detailed auditable incident logs will be critical to Operational Resilience. Organisations will need to provide flexible and reliable means of mass communications with remote and distributed workforces during Covid-19. Organisations also need to be prepared to capture related Covid-19 incidents and how these should be securely yet easily communicated within the organisation in an auditable manner should be considered in the “new normal”.
  4. Business Continuity plans should not be created as a one-time exercise and then left alone until a crisis strikes. Ensuring Organisational Resilience requires a constant eye on new and emerging threats. The current headlines are bursting with coronavirus updates as organisations evaluate how their supply chain and vendor relationships could be disrupted. Operational Resilience teams are now faced with growing the scope and scale of their existing programs to meet new demands such as those unique to COVID-19.
  5. Exercising your plans and collaborating with multiple departments, senior management & 3rd party suppliers is an integral part of an organisation’s resilience strategy. Planning & preparing for an exercise, execution and post exercise documentation are all fundamental to a successful exercise & ultimately a smooth recovery should you need to execute your plans. Designing an exercise and preparing documentation for use pre/post and during a table-top exercise is crucial in these challenging times.

We will be working with the BCI on a global survey of Changes to the Business Continuity and Operational Resilience Industry post pandemic in August 2020 – if you would like to receive a copy of the report when it is released please provide your contact details here.

To learn more about FortressAS and how we can help you improve the well-being of your home-workers, reduce your office costs, and improve your operational resilience during the return to the work:

The Fortress Home Pod Solution
The Return To Work
Business Continuity Awareness Week 2020