Staff communication: An ear to the ground

By Ross Tieman
Published: June 24 2005 13:52 | Last updated: June 24 2005 13:52

When UK business continuity managers gathered a couple of weeks ago in Brighton for the annual conference of the Association of Insurance and Risk Managers, one topic was on everybody’s mind: mounting importance of employee consultation.

The introduction in April of the Information and Consultation regulations gave staff the right to be involved in business continuity planning in organisations of more than 150 people wherever it affects their jobs.

Not that companies necessarily needed compulsion to talk to staff about continuity issues. A survey of 2,000 members of Britain’s Business Continuity Institute found in March that protecting employees was the paramount incentive for organisations to engage in business continuity planning.

Philip Carter, senior manager in the enterprise risk group at adviser Deloitte, says the two most striking emerging trends in business continuity planning are accelerating the speed of recovery after incidents and ensuring companies and organisations can recover from any blow to their human capital, particularly the knowledge staff have.

It is easy to understand why knowledge management is becoming a priority for Europe’s business continuity managers. It does not take a big disaster involving loss of life to cause disruption.

Take, for example, a small IT department employing three people responsible for a business critical system. One takes maternity leave, a second resigns for a job elsewhere and the third breaks a leg playing football.

Without a business continuity system that includes knowledge management the company could struggle to find someone who understands the system.

Early assessments of human risk inevitably focused on senior managers and those whose jobs put them in the front line – such as expatriate staff working for a defence contractor in Saudi Arabia, for example.

But as companies slim down and industrial and support functions become automated key personnel whose loss can affect efficiency are found throughout the organisation.

"By talking to staff, they are going to get better insights into ways to make workplaces safer and ensure business continuity"

One way to tackle the problem is to ensure ready access to personnel records that show who has knowledge of key processes or clients gained in an earlier role. Come what may, says Mr Carter, companies are finding they must duplicate knowledge. “No matter now much you might like to you can’t protect your people from all the hazards of life.”

Organisations are also increasingly obliged to listen to their staff. This does not come easily. Business continuity managers, says Mr Carter, tend to deal with other managers though “we do occasionally use shop floor people to understand, say, what the mechanical issues are with a particular piece of machinery”.

Unions believe they have more to contribute. They say employees have as much interest in ensuring business continuity as managers.

Hannah Reed, senior employment rights officer at the Trades Union Congress in London, says improving consultation over continuity planning offers “a win-win opportunity for employees and companies alike”.

In the past, she says, some companies and organisations paid only lip service to their declared principles of consultation. The new regulations, she believes, will encourage them to listen more closely to staff. And “by talking to staff, they are going to get better insights into ways to make workplaces safer and ensure business continuity”.

In practice it seems companies recognise consultation is important but take a pragmatic view on how much effort to invest in planning for contingencies they hope will never happen.

Mike Lewis, Group Risk Director at global music group EMI, says consulting managers and those with responsibility for particular locations is essential to identify continuity risks and achieve the best solutions.

”We polled a number of key managers in our core businesses and key locations before finalising our recovery strategy,” he says. “That helps you get it right.”

That done, EMI was able to produce a global business recovery strategy that includes assessment of the recovery strategies of key suppliers, such as the manufacturers of compact discs.

During the past 24 months, after a risk assessment presented to its board audit committee, EMI overhauled recovery planning. In particular it evolved plans to ensure security of copyrighted music and recordings, ensuring the catalogue in which much of the company’s value is encapsulated, is well protected.

Some provisions of the standard are universal: evidence of effective procedures for evacuating a building or dealing with a medical emergency is required at every location. But in other respects deployment can vary. “We don’t necessarily need the same arrangements for continuity in Indonesia or Columbia as we do in Britain or the US,” Mr Lewis says.

“Cost benefit analysis is among the tools we use.”