Business Continuity Awareness Week is an opportunity for you to showcase your organisation’s Business Continuity Programme and to show your colleagues why Business Continuity Management is an increasingly important management tool.

The following suggestions are for you to consider utilising during and beyond Business Continuity Awareness Week. They will enable you to introduce the concept or reinforce the recognition of your organisation’s readiness to respond to known or unplanned events that may be disruptive in nature. You are encouraged to modify and customise these ideas to take into account your organisation’s culture and the maturity of your Business Continuity Management plan.

BCM can be a challenge at the best of times. Sharing promotional ideas across industry will not only enhance our own organisations but also add status to BCM practitioners. You are encouraged to take the ideas presented, enhance and exploit them and most importantly share your successes with your BCI colleagues.

INTERNAL EVENTS : Awareness

• Encourage your business groups to include Business Continuity Management as an agenda item during their staff meeting this week.

• Encourage your business groups to circulate and update their contact lists/call trees, etc.

• Encourage your business groups to review their evacuation procedures including the involvement of your building managers to conduct fire drills that week.

• Include articles in your corporate newsletters and/or on your intranet website

• Produce and circulate an annual schedule of BCM related activities (BIA review, BCP revisions, planned exercises, etc.)

• Have fun! Host quizzes to enhance Business Continuity awareness across your organization

• Conduct lunch & learn sessions across your organization:
       - Introduction to BCM
       - What’s happening in the industry?
       - Show casing “best practices” within your organization – encourage         business units to share their experiences and successes

INTERNAL EVENTS : Education

• Invite a fellow BCI business continuity expert to present to these groups outlined below – this will give a fresh perspective

• Conduct refresher sessions for your experienced Business Continuity Coordinators

• Conduct training sessions for new Business Continuity Coordinators

• Conduct refresher or training sessions for your Executives

• Conduct refresher or training sessions for your governance groups (compliance, audit, risk management, etc.) Invite these groups to present their own perspective on business continuity

• Conduct training sessions for employees

INTERNAL EVENTS : Business Continuity Exercises

• Launch your exercise schedule for the year during this week

• Conduct a table top exercise with your executives

• Conduct table-top exercises across your business units

• Conduct component exercises such as:
        - Call tree activation
        - Command centre readiness
        - Table top exercises with external business partners

EXTERNAL EVENTS : Business Partners and Clients

• Host an Open House for clients and business partners and conduct mini-awareness sessions

• Arrange a tour of your recovery location(s)

• Showcase internal “best practices”

• Invite senior executives from your organisation to participate in these events to endorse your organisation’s management commitment to BCM

• Invite your business partners and clients to share their Business Continuity Plan

• Organise sessions to highlight the interdependencies of your organisation and your business partner/client

• Invite Business Continuity related vendors to share their products/services.

Any questions, please contact lee.glendon@thebci.org