Australian businesses tend to be more relaxed than their UK counterparts when it comes to business continuity, due in part to a “she’ll be right mate” culture in Australia, according to David Simpson, managing director of CQR Consulting.
While businesses in the UK tend to think about worst case scenarios in business continuity plans, he said this is important for the purposes of scenario development and gaining awareness and commitment from senior managers.
“That’s what we really need to do, but it’s not an easy thing to do. So it’s important to sell the importance of risk management to executives,” he said.
“If a company has identified a shortfall in its business continuity, you need management commitment to be able to remedy it.”
Because of the investment involved in business continuity management, Simpson said management need to understand why their organisation is doing it.
“Awareness campaigns and briefing sessions on risk management and business continuity management for executives is a good start,” he said.
“Then it’s a matter of going back to first principles and picking someone like a business unit manager to champion a business impact analysis on their business unit, and coming up with a set of processes that work.”
This can then be used to demonstrate the importance of good business continuity management to the rest of the business, he said.
“Managers then understand what you are trying to protect, what you are trying to recover, what processes are important to the business to keep it operating.”
Simpson, who also delivers business continuity training on behalf of SAI Global, said risk management professionals have to start a conversation with executives based on a common understanding.
“When you go in as a business continuity person, your biggest challenge is trying to get that management understanding, at least at a base level, and then get a commitment for the investment and time required for developing a holistic management system that goes beyond just IT disaster recovery,” he said.
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