Contingency Planning
An effective Emergency Plan has accurate directions for quickly
assessing damage, quickly dispatching resources to needed locations and
minimizing congestion. To provide effective emergency plans:
- Regularly re-examine all aspects of emergency
preparedness
- Regularly re-define the role of emergency
operating centers
- Regularly re-train employees
- Regularly test employee capabilities
- Ensure emergency drills closely depict real-life
crises
- Regularly update contingency plans
Four key flaws in emergency plans are:
- Contingency Plan is not organized
- Contingency Plan format is too complex
- Contingency Plan is generic or too detailed
- Alternates are not identified or not accurate
1. Emergency Plan is not organized
Poorly documented disaster planning may be worse than
useless. In a crisis, people waste valuable time searching for critical
information.
Does your contingency plan provide essential information for each crisis?
Or is it just a binder of jumbled information from many sources?
- Assemble essential information for the right
people in the right sequence
- Organize information in a
logical flow of how it will be used in a crisis
- Keep information
that is used only for planning in a separate binder
The size of your company determines how many documents are needed. A
small organization in one location may only need a
single document that contains all emergency information. A large company with
multiple locations needs an executive document, a company plan, sub-plans and many
supportive documents.
Your executive summary should be a concise guide that informs
upper management what to do immediately in a disaster. Executive summaries
can spell out who is responsible for what and should include
removable copies of key information pages that show current telephone numbers and
alternate contact information that may needed in a disaster.
Your emergency plan should provide key policies about
generic disasters. Executives can also use it to plan long-term recovery
efforts. An emergency plan should create clear pictures of how the
organization should respond to generic disasters.
2. Emergency Plan is too complex
Electronic emergency plans can become a problem
in a disaster.
- What knowledge is required to access
the emergency planning documents?
- Will computers be accessible to those who need
them - in a power failure?
- Will the applications that access and view the plans be
running?
- Will current versions of the documents be
available?
- Will emergency staff know how to find what they
need in documents?
- Have key people rehearsed the plans?
Store off-site, easily accessible paper copies of
current emergency plans.
3. Emergency Plan is too generic or too detailed
A generic crisis management plan may look good on paper. But a generic
plan based on false or incomplete assumptions will fail in a disaster.
Although a generic plan may be a useful planning tool, have it carefully
scrutinized by all stakeholders and regularly test it to ensure that it
works.
- Overly detailed plans can cause delays
during a
disaster
- The true “worst case” scenario may not have been
identified
- Emergency plans document critical functions in
too much detail
A real disaster will rarely match an anticipated disaster,
and any plan will have serious gaps. Therefore, focus initially on a "worst
case" scenario.
4. Are alternates accurately identified?
Your disaster recovery plan can quickly be out of date, with changes
in personnel, vendors and clients. Your disaster recovery plan should
continually validate contact information for essential staff, and provide
alternate means for reaching them should the primary contact fail.
- In a crisis, many people will try to contact executives and managers
- Expect networks to be jammed
- List alternate telephone numbers, and those of
alternates
Nightmare Scenario
Imagine yourself managing a major disaster recovery effort
using an emergency plan with the above errors! Before that happens - check each contingency plan for
these common errors and help minimize your organization’s risk - and your
personal risk of losing your job. Create effective recovery plans!
Martyn Carruthers was a paramedic (Royal Navy) and served on nuclear
submarines during the Cold War. He was a health physics and
safety officer at nuclear power stations, and Radiation
Protection Officer for the Canadian government, where he worked with industry, Public Health
and Emergency Measures Organization (EMO). Martyn Carruthers founded
Soulwork Systemic Coaching,
a complete system of effective coaching and corporate mentorship.
Do you want relationship coaching or systemic coach training? We can train you to coach individuals, partners and teams to resolve a wide range of physical, emotional and relationship challenges.
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