Exploring a New Approach to BCM Training Practice ‌ Exploring a New Approach to BCM Training Practice ‌
Wee Wee
that they were unaware, and only 10 percent had used these games for training purposes. Eighty-five percent of respondents expressed interest in sending their staff for Computer Simulation Game training, if it was made available to them. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Singapore hotels are taking the terrorism threat seriously. All respondents confirmed that their security staff needed to have anti-terrorism skills. While this is an obvious consideration for security personnel, 75 percent of respondents expected the same from their crisis management team and 60 percent expected their general hotel employees to be similarly equipped (Table 5). The respondents demonstrated their seriousness by ensuring that staff was trained to have these skills; i.e. all respondents provided anti-terrorism training for their security staff. However, only 51 percent of generic hotel employees (who make up the majority of hotel employees) received such training (Table 6). This is of concern as the generic hotel employee would likely be among the first-line employees to encounter the perpetrators of a terrorist attack and should be able to respond effectively. In view of the increasingly important role that private sector’s security professional play in the fight against terrorism (Khair, 2017), it is important that a set of common standards in terms of training and operations be widely adopted in the industry. The findings indicated that 60 percent of respondents had security policies based on the ISO standard11. BCM policies fared worse at only 44 percent. This variability on policies between individual hotels can affect the effectiveness of collaborative efforts between the public and private sector in the event of a crisis. The government is cognizant of this and has introduced training programmes incorporating these standards under Project Guardian and other schemes. Drills and exercises are the best training formats to accomplish this and the government agencies and hotels have been conducting joint exercises for this reason. However, each exercise can involve a limited number of hotel participants at any one point in time. Furthermore, the frequency and duration of such training will be limited due to the high cost and disruptive nature of such exercises in everyday hotel functioning. Computer simulation games can therefore serve as an intermediate format where staff can learn and practice responses that conform to government standards. Security and Crisis Management staff can experience scenarios re-enacting actual attacks in other countries that provide a level of realism whilst keeping disruptions to normal business operations to a manageable level. These scenarios can be updated based on available counter-terrorism intelligence from the authorities.
11
The proportion of large hotels (those with more than 300 rooms) fared worse with only 53 percent reported having security plans based on the ISO Standard. 14 98
Asian Journal of Public Affairs | 2017 Asian Journal of Public Affairs | 2017