ISJ: Business Continuity Planning
Pre COVID-19 it’s likely that crisis management and business continuity didn’t appear on the radar for many organisations as a priority. Over the past year, however, many companies have had their policies stress tested and many are now implementing and updating business continuity plans.
EXCLUSIVE: Get Your Business Continuity Planning Right
Business continuity planning creates systems to sustain or recover ‘critical business activity’ in response to significant disruption. Pre COVID-19 it’s likely that crisis management and business continuity didn’t appear on the radar for many organisations as a priority. Over the past year, however, many companies have had their policies stress tested and many are now implementing and updating business continuity plans.
As we move forward out of the pandemic it is vital that employers are also familiar with legal obligations and guidance regarding COVID-19 controls and ‘safe working practices’. International Security Journal speaks with Riz Omar at Locate-Global about the benefits of utilising a robust Incident Management Platform to assist companies to navigate through the pandemic.
Clear communications
Clear lines of instant communication are critical for workforce safety and visibility on the number of cases, suspected cases and the location of employees with symptoms is key to a business’ continuity. It is possible to quickly identify symptomatic team members, investigate their proximity to other users in the region and send alerts on the need for self-isolation.
“Despite the roll out of the vaccine, cases are continuing to rise throughout the UK in small pockets – affecting workforce operations. Swiftly gaining a real-time understanding of ‘organisational health’ is an important step in any phased return to work,” explained Riz Omar.
An Incident Management System will provide full visualisation of all users – tracking and monitoring cases to prevent further contagion. Until full vaccination programmes are fully embedded, future infections can be prevented by geo-fencing incident zones and boundaries around significant areas.
Incident monitoring
Employees who may be exposed to higher risk or who are travelling through high-risk zones can be monitored. You can quickly locate users, send or receive immediate alerts in the event of an incident and initiate an instantaneous response with critical instructions.
Mass notification enables businesses to send notifications to individuals or groups, in turn keeping all stakeholders informed before, during and after critical events. In-built notification logs provide the real-time status of each message sent, the recipients and delivery so that organisations can be sure key messages are reaching the necessary parties.
The Locate-Global platform boasts integrated statistics from Intelligence Fusion, displaying global risk and incident feeds directly into the dashboard, offering employers a greater understanding of the threats and risks within their area of operation. You can monitor where your people are in the world and access recent events that have taken place in that location and which may impact your team. Employees can be updated on changing quarantine rules, travel bans and curfews – or new legislation that could affect operational capability.
As the impact of the global coronavirus outbreak continues to change our lives, people across the globe are adopting new ways of working to help authorities stem the worldwide spread of COVID-19. Organisations can try to control the impact on employees and operations by adopting new ways of communicating to keep people in the loop and informed on critical developments. Ultimately, Incident Management platforms provide your workforce with a means to respond and report problems directly, allowing you to make informed and faster decisions when needed.
