Now is the time to tackle your business resilience.

With the annual budgeting setting time just around the corner, this is a good time to start preparations to build a case to have budget allocated to increase your organisation’s resilience.

Leaders often say “Don’t waste a crisis” in the wake of a disaster. The month of January in Australia has been extraordinary by any measure – and the crises continues into February. Whether it’s floods, fires, hail, unbreathable air, dust storms, extreme heat, drought (and drinking water scarcity), extreme wind and now the emerging coronavirus – we’ve had them all in Australia. The impact of the fires on our flora and fauna will take months to just assess. The impact on our social infrastructure, homes and businesses will be huge.

With these issues being discussed every day in the media, executives must be considering the possibility that a similar crisis could impact the viability of the organisation they lead. Who in Tennis Australia could have anticipated that the Australian Open would have been impacted by smoke coming from bushfires 1,000KM away?

If your organisation currently does not have an annual budget for business resilience – now is the time to have one approved! Increasing your organisation’s business resilience must be treated as an on-going program. It is not a project! You may need to re-establish a business continuity and crisis management plan initially and as a consequence there will be a project to carry out this work. You will also need to budget for its improvement over time and its on-going maintenance. As a minimum, you should seek budget approval over three years. Five years is preferable! The Business Resilience Program budget request should contain allocation for the following activities:

• Allocation of an FTE (or part FTE) to be the person responsible for the Program.
• Establishment of a Program Policy and Program Steering Committee.
• Funds for projects to develop a Crisis Management Plan (CMP) and a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). If these already exist, estimate the effort involved in updating them – if required.
• Allowance for the provision of workplace recovery offices – if required.
• Budget for crisis communications software – if required.
• Allocation of a legal person to review your organisation’s contracts with critical third party suppliers (particularly cloud providers).
• Once the CMP and BCP are established, initiate an exercising schedule (at least annually) where key participants in the Program exercise their skills.
• Improvement of the Program over time.
• Annual review of your Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to ensure your Prioritised Activities have not changed since you last completed the BIA.

Please contact Continuity Matters if you need assistance in completing this work. We can also assist in the development of a business case to help justify the allocation of the funds. Your organisation could also consider using Continuity Matters to implement the Program “as a service”.

The April budget setting period is not far away – now is the time to start!