How Business Continuity Planning Basics Can Help During Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic

For the small to mid-sized business, there is little if any budget or time to create a Pandemic Plan, much less a basic Business Continuity Plan. During these unprecedented times, many organizations are enduring business interruption and uncertainty like they’ve never seen.  This can be devastating to many businesses, and our hearts go out to those who cannot keep their doors open. For others, this event is paralyzing, but not a knockout blow. For many, you might be able to take advantage of this event so the next business interruption won’t be as painful.

Right now, business owners and managers are forced to come up with workaround procedures for their critical business processes. Now is a great time to document which processes and procedures are critical for each department, the tasks required, and which resources are utilized to accomplish the business processes.  Once you identify what you need, you can devise a contingency or “workaround” plan to keep your business working as well as it can during this time of social distancing and closed offices.

Get all team members involved to assist with identifying the processes/procedures for each department, determining which are critical, and creating workaround procedures for these critical processes. This work is a good portion of the fundamentals of Business Continuity Planning.  By organizing and documenting the information you and your team are processing right now, you are well on your way to building your Business Continuity Plan.