BUSINESS CONTINUITY IN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC CRISIS While COVID-19 has significantly impacted our communities both locally and abroad, the Australian storage business community finds itself uniquely positioned as an essential service for both commercial and personal needs. By Marcus Vaughan Director, Growth Strategies – RiskLogic.
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hile business in this industry will change, the show must go on. To assist business leaders navigate their people and operations through these trying times, we’re going to walk through some of the key considerations to crisis management and business continuity.
ASSESSING IMPACTS When any major event takes place that has the ability to significantly impact your organisation, a foundational starting point in crisis management is to undertake an impact assessment on both current and potential impacts. The key process here is to understand ‘How does this event have the potential to impact our organisation?’. Walking through this assessment, organisations should always consider a variety of impact categories such as people, operations, financial, reputation. By clarifying where the greatest impacts will be, you can begin to consider where you allocate your time and resources to execute strategies to reduce these impacts.
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PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT During COVID-19, the driving complexity that has hindered many plans is the execution of health and safety strategies for operating onsite for both employees, contractors and customers. The strategies employed to mitigate health concerns should reference Australian federal and state health guidelines. This will ensure that best practice is considered in the current environment. Social distancing measures, cleaning regimes and quarantine / isolation measures all need to be considered, aligned with health authority advice. Tracking your actions during COVID-19 (facts, tasks and communications) is also an important factor. Many organisations are already finding a need to demonstrate to a variety of stakeholders what decisions were made, on what information, at what time. Crisis management tools such as CQ have been developed to simplify this process.
COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR STAKEHOLDERS In crisis management, communication is everything. However one of the greatest undoing’s of many organisations in crisis communications is first considering
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