By Tamara Edwards
Do you remember when the pandemic first became truly real for you?
For me it was when I had to cancel my highly anticipated trip to Italy at the end of February 2020 due to the worsening situation developing there. Ever the optimist, the upside to losing money for hotels, flights, trains and pre-booked tours was not risking contracting covid-19 and dying! In the coming weeks and months, I would see another upside to this pandemic. The validation of the business continuity profession.
This is what the profession prepares organisations for; to plan for the disruptive, the unexpected, the impossible, the inevitable. Simply put, Business Continuity:
- Thinks about the “what ifs” of life and then puts a plan in place to deal with those threats to minimize the impacts.
- Has an active role in responding to disruptive events, putting the plan into motion and coordinating action items until resolution of the issue.
- Directs resources to what is absolutely critical in the first instance to ensure that the right activities receive the necessary support to remain operational. This decreases the probability of a single event resulting in the demise of that entity.
No other incident in recent time has highlighted the importance of business continuity management as vividly as the covid-19 pandemic. It has touched every part of the globe, affecting healthcare systems and economies; essentially, disrupting life as we know it.
According to a special report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean on the impact of Covid-19:
- “The pandemic is affecting the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean through external and domestic factors whose combined impact will lead to the most severe contraction in economic activity that the region has experienced since records began in 1900.
- The decline in the world’s gross output in 2020 will be the largest in decades. Global GDP is expected to shrink by around 2%, with a larger contraction in developed economies than in emerging economies.
- The volume of world trade has collapsed: The World Trade Organization (WTO) estimates a fall of between 13% and 32% in 2020.
- The Caribbean economies are expected to contract by 2.6%, dragged down by lower demand for labour-intensive tourism services.
- Companies, regardless of their size, are facing substantial falls in revenue, difficulties in obtaining credit and an increased likelihood of insolvency.”
Even without that report, all we have to do is look around at the businesses permanently closing their doors, and those on the bubble as another wave hits, to know that not only are our lives at risk but also our livelihoods. When I think about this, I wonder, how many of these businesses could have been saved if they had a plan? Since for many it was not due to a lack of demand that they went out of business, but rather because they were unable to pivot quickly enough to allow them to continue servicing their customers profitably. I absolutely recognize how atypical the pandemic has been when compared to other traditional disruptors. However, I still wonder how many might have survived had they had a plan in place.
Am I saying that having a Business Continuity Management (BCM) programme will guarantee that your organisation will not go out of business? The best planning in the world cannot give that guarantee.
I am saying however, if you have been through the process of implementing a BCM programme you will increase the likelihood that your organisation can face disruptions, survive and potentially thrive during those periods. Since you will know what your critical processes are; would have differentiated between what is absolutely vital to your organisation and what you can live without until you can restore full operations; and you would have allocated resources to ensure that you could immediately activate your contingency plan to allow you to continue these critical operations until you could restore full capabilities. Thus, enabling you to continue to serve your customers.
With a BCM in place, your team knows what is important and the required turnaround time before your organisation gets to the point of “no return” as it relates to losses of revenue, customers, and reputation.
With a BCM programme in place (at even the most basic level) it is possible to have an outcome like the one shared below:
| “Being prepared is all about being able to pick up the weak signals and being ready before something hits you hard. Our example in my case is the pandemic was declared by the WHO on 11 March, and I had my first business continuity meeting on the 5th of March, one week before WHO declared it a pandemic. So as a risk manager, I was watching the situation in China. I alerted my management and I said, “I see this coming and I think we should be ready.” We did not have a formal business continuity committee. And I wanted the high-level cross functional-committee and my CEO agreed. We have three vice presidents and seven GMs in the committee. At that time we did not know what we were going to do, but we had a brainstorm. We figured our biggest issue is going to be the people and the second biggest issue is going to be of course, supply chain. So, when we started to have different types of lockdowns and curfews, I had prepared several different scenarios and sent it to all business units long before it happened. And I had asked what happens if our city is locked down? What happens if our province is locked down? What happens if our overseas shipments are delayed? So, we made sure that we had three to six months of chemicals, essential consumables and anything else critical. And we started working. We have two doctors at the two different sites and they were also part of our committee. So we had to do lots of things. But we managed absolutely no business impact on any kind of business and we had no financial losses. I believe this is because we were so agile and we adapted so quickly that we managed to weather the storm.” Enterprise Risk Manager, Energy & Utilities, Saudi Arabia
Source: BCI Horizon Scan Report 2021 |
Some might say that a pandemic of this magnitude only comes around once every century. They are looking forward to when things return to “normal”. Looking forward to when the issues faced can easily be solved when they arise and do not require as much foresight, because the other issues are not as disruptive right?
For many of us the pandemic was and continues to be the most urgent challenge faced in 2020/2021. For some it was not the only disruptor. The BCI Horizon Scan Report 2021 provides “insight on the biggest disruptions from the previous 12 months, along with the future threats facing organizations in the year ahead”, and from it we learn that:
- As most of the workforce transitioned overnight to remote working, technology usage and global internet traffic increased by approximately 43% and 35% respectively, resulting in more frequent IT & Telecommunications outages being experienced by organisations in 2020.
- There were also elevated levels of cybercrime reported. In May 2020, Netscout observed 929,000 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks – the largest number ever seen in a month. The latest high profile ransomware attack targeting Colonial Pipeline (an American oil pipeline) in May 2021, demonstrates that any aspect of business and society can be vulnerable to attack, even our basic critical infrastructure.
- New records were created for extreme weather events, namely:
- Volcanoes erupting in Vincent and the Grenadines, Iceland, and the Philippines.
- The devastating Australian bushfires and Californian wildfires which destroyed millions of hectares.
- The super-cyclone Amphan was the strongest cyclone to hit the Bay of Bengal this century resulting in losses of $14 billion for India alone.
- Texas snowstorm in February 2021 with an early estimated cost of disruption put at $50 million.
Top of mind for resiliency professionals as it relates to anticipated disruptors for 2021 include:
| Ranking | Threat |
| 1 | Non-occupational disease (e.g. pandemic) |
| 2 | Cyber attack & data breach |
| 3 | IT & Telecommunications outage |
| 4 | Regulatory changes |
| 5 | Extreme weather events (floods, storms, freeze, etc.) |
| 6 | Critical Infrastructure failure |
| 7 | Supply Chain disruption |
| 8 | Health incident (occupational disease, reportable occupational disease, stress/mental health, increased sickness absence) |
| 9 | Lack of talent / key skills |
| 10 | Natural Disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.) |
Source: BCI Horizon Scan Report 2021
As we look forward to the end of the pandemic, make no mistake another disruption is on the way. Companies and governments must make haste to ensure that they have plans in place to deal with these hazards. Being aware is the first step.
May 17th – 21st, 2021 is Business Continuity Awareness Week. The 2021 theme is “Business Continuity Starts with You”. This is apt since we all have a role to play in the survival of our organizations. Let us each take a step today towards ensuring the resiliency of our entities. As an individual you should know whether you function in a role that is critical to your organisation. Find out whether your organization has a plan for emergencies and disruptions and know your role in this plan. At the enterprise level this means organisations becoming prepared for disruptive eventualities, whether that means functioning while dealing with a dearth of human resources, building unavailability, natural disasters or a cyber-attack. Leaders must ensure that the system is in place to plan, test and communicate the actions to be taken to deal when (not if) these disruptions occur.
The pandemic has shown us that the “impossible” is possible. If a pandemic with a magnitude not seen for a hundred years can happen, how much more any of the other abovementioned threats.
The pandemic has brought so much grief, hardship, and trauma to so many lives and communities. The effects of which we will be dealing with even long after populations have been vaccinated and we can once again go about life maskless. With all of the pain that it has brought, let it jolt us to become more proactive and intentional about becoming better prepared and more resilient in the face of adversity. The tools are readily available, so let us use them to add an additional measure of protection to our organisations, thus ensuring their longevity and protecting our lives and livelihoods for generations to come.
Join hands with us at the UWI-Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business as we make available some of these tools that can be used to help our organisations become more resilient. To find out how you can participate in one or more of our upcoming sessions or how we can work with your organisation specifically contact us at openenrolment@lokjackgsb.edu.tt or (868) 299-0218 ext. 330
About the Author
Tamara Edwards is an Associate Business Continuity Professional attached to the UWI-ALJGSB as an Independent Contractor. You can reach her via email at t.edwards@lokjackgsb.edu.tt or 299-0218 ext. 330
Sources
ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) 2020, “Measuring the impact of COVID-19 with a view to reactivation”, COVID-19 Special Report, Number 2, 21 April 2020 [online] https://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/45477/6/S2000285_en.pdf
BCI (The Business Continuity Institute) 2021. BCI Horizon Scan Report 2021 [online] https://www.thebci.org/uploads/assets/2313759b-70a7-4452-ab8c3d0ed62184df/e125e510-dcbc-4cc9-bf61b8f4c180c9e5/BCI-0007j-Horizon-Scan-ReportSinglesLow.pdf
BBC, The (2021). Colonial hack: How did cyber-attackers shut off pipeline? BBC [online] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57063636
BBC, The (2021). ‘Heartbreaking’ return to St Vincent’s volcano-hit ‘red zone’. BBC [online] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-56934596
BBC, The (2021). Texas weather: Deaths mount as winter storm leaves millions without power. BBC [online] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56095479
