IMR652 - article review

LESSONS FROM DISASTER - CREATING A BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN THAT REALLY WORKS BY: NURSYAKIRAH SYAFIQAH SUMMARISE This article is about to construct a business continuity plan for a business organization before any disaster happened. This is because the authors had learned a lesson from an incident where a disaster happened in their country. Having a business continuity plan is important but the real question is, does it really effective if there is a disaster going on? This article will be explaining more about experiences of few Canterbury organizations who had established their business continuity plans before the disaster happened. Authors examined how effective their plans, what worked well and least well. This study aims to inform future practice by examining organizations actual experiences of utilizing these plans in a disaster situation. It is all started of earthquake disaster happened in Christchurch, New Zealand on September 4,2010 and once again happened on 22 February 2011 which has caused 185 deaths and resulted in enormous damage to the central business district as well as many residential areas. A further two major aftershocks above magnitude 6 occurred in June 2011 and December 2011.

Based on the research that authors had carried on based on interviews with the organizations who had involved in the disaster, it can be conclude as there are four most effective parts of the plan which are identification of critical functions, communication plan, information back-ups and training and testing. Identification of critical functions is important as a key aid to direct resources and people in the most effective way prior to the more damaging disaster. Also, communication plan is the existence of up to date call trees, multiple copies of key contacts in paper and electronic form and the inclusion of next of kin contact details were essential in managing the immediate response. Next is information back-ups which can be explained as All of the organisations had effective back-up procedures which allowed for the resumption of ICT systems to support response and recovery. This may reflect the long emphasis on ICT systems within the business continuity field. Last but not least, training and testing can be explained by regular training as providing the employees the practice needed to know almost t instinctively what to do during the events and take actions that saved both themselves and the organisations. The least effective parts of the continuity plan identified was lacking in important detail, particularly for immediate actions following the disaster. Such as an example, when the plan stated that an alternative location would be used; there was no further detail on finding or setting up this alternate location. Next, is the plan was quite thorough, too much of the detail was presented and this made it very difficult for employees on the ground to quickly find the relevant information. The large amount of information presented actually hindered employee’s ability to access the information they needed.

CRITISM This article is definitely useful and could give awareness to most of the business organization if there is a disaster happened in the future. Such as an example, today in 2021, the disaster of pandemic COVID-19 has been happening for more than a year. Most of the business organization have been affected through their sales and sustainability. Thus, it is important for all business organization to have a business continuity plan for them. Also, the points that the authors have given is definitely impactful and straight-forward. It makes readers easy to understand and highlighting the main point in the article. All of the points stated in the article are acceptable and agreeable. It will definitely can help most of the business organization to plan well on their business continuity plan. SUGGESTIONS There are a few of suggestions that can be implemented for business organization on their business continuity plan. First, societal and personal disruption effects need to be included in BCP. To maintain this asset, organisations need to invest significantly in supporting employees, in order that employees are able and willing to support the organisation. An effective BCP needs to consider the wellbeing of human resources as a key aspect of operability. Second, employee resilience needs to be developed pre-event. This builds the base for when a crisis occurs: resilient employees will already have developed healthy levels of adaptive capacity and confidence which boosts their chances of coping well through a disaster event. Third, organisations need to identify leaders that will be effective in a crisis. Current day-to-day managers could be excellent leaders in routine environments, but put under the stress and chaos of a crisis where they must make important decisions rapidly and on the move, they may crumble.