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Business Continuity Planning

During these uncertain times caused by growing global concern due to the coronavirus (COVID-19), businesses face many challenges from the health and well-being of workers and the broader community to disrupted supply chains. MiSAFE Solutions provides clear guidance to help all businesses to prepare and implement a practical and effective business continuity plan.

To create a business continuity plan i.e. COVID-19 Pandemic Management Plan, you will need to identify stakeholders that may be impacted by the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 crisis, and how you will ensure minimal risk is felt by those disruptions.

Key stakeholders include:

  • workers, contractors and volunteers
  • suppliers
  • services and utilities; and
  • Government entities etc.

Note: This list is not exhaustive.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Management Plan should include the following aspects:

  1. Prevention and Preparedness
  2. Response; and
  3. Recovery.

Prevention and Preparedness

Like any business planning exercise, you will need to develop a well documented and structured plan. This will essentially be called a COVID-19 Pandemic Management Plan. This plan in its entirety will enable you to understand the core risks to your business during the pandemic and how you will best manage these risks thus protecting the business as much as possible during turbulent economic activities.

If you haven’t already done so, you need to develop a COVID-19 Pandemic Management Plan now. The plan should be reviewed as new “Major” information becomes available.

The prevention and preparedness element of the plan must include:

  • Expectations and assumptions of your organisation’s operating environment. I.e. what you expect to happen during the pandemic and how you will deal with the disruption.
  • Interdependencies within the organisation. i.e. what does your business depend on to make sure it stays in operation; and
  • Major vendors / suppliers. List out who your major suppliers are and what impacts they will be experiencing during the pandemic.

Response

Your response action planning will need to include initial and specific details around what initial controls you will be putting in place to mitigate the risks to the health and safety of your workers, contractors, and other stakeholders.

This could include:

  • social distancing (e.g. exclusion zones)
  • PPE (P2 / N95 face masks, gloves, antibacterial sanitisers etc.
  • working from home protocols
  • reducing staff interaction and movement
  • reducing or eliminating domestic and international travel; and
  • hygienically cleaning plant and equipment etc.

Recovery

If your business is able to weather the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, then plan for a quick recovery now. Once the economy gets going again, many other businesses may need your services to ensure the quick recovery is smooth. This means ensuring you have enough resources to cope with the ramp up in business.

MiSAFE Solutions develops COVID-19 Pandemic Management Plans, and other supporting resources for its clients. This also includes the provision of offline capable software to receive information from workers and push quality information to workers in the field. We provide free 30min advice to any business as our heart is to support Australian businesses as much as our own. Contact us today on 07 5641 2101 or via email contact@misafesolutions.com.au and let us help you develop your Business Continuity Plan today.