When Crisis Hits: You’re Thinking About the Business. Your Employees Are Thinking About Home.
Editor’s Note: For this month’s blog, I’m excited to welcome my friend Jason Schmerer. Jason and I have known each other since 2022, and while we haven’t worked together professionally, we share a passion for emergency management and resilience.
I love the different perspective Jason brings to business continuity in this month’s blog: “when we talk about keeping an organization running, we can’t forget about the people who keep it running, or the families they’re worried about when disaster strikes.”
I hope you enjoy Jason’s perspective as much as I did.
Andrea Davis
Founder and President, The Resiliency Initiative
I want to take a different angle on business continuity.
There is so much going on today. There are fires, flooding, extreme heat, and disasters affecting communities across the country and around the world. With new and evolving threats happening month after month and year after year, one has to wonder, if you are a business or organizational leader, how do you prepare for the unexpected when you don’t know what will happen next or when it will happen? It really can make a CEO stay up at night.
So, what do you do?
With all the natural and human-caused disasters happening around us, we spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a good CEO or organizational leader. I would argue that what makes you a great CEO isn’t really about the CEO at all. It’s about the people doing the work, and their families.
Your employees want to pick up their kids. They want to see their children and grandchildren graduate, and maybe even see them get married. They have people outside of work who depend on them and whom they worry about. That is who you need to be a good CEO for. You can be a great leader by paying even closer attention to your employees and recognizing the lives they have beyond your organization. Be a CEO for their families, too.
Continuity of the Business Means Continuity of the People
Business continuity is real, and it is something no company ever wants to have to implement. But when you do, think about your employees.
At its most basic level, business continuity is the ability of a company or organization to continue functioning during and after a disruption. Take COVID-19, for instance. According to research from Mercer cited by IBM, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, 51% of companies worldwide did not have a business continuity plan in place. Think about that. More than half.
When you are thinking about the continuity of your business, I encourage you to also think about the continuity of your employees. What is happening to them? What is happening to their families? What will they need to do at home while you are asking them to keep their eyes on the job at hand?
That is the different twist on business continuity I want leaders to consider. If employees know their families are supported, they are in a much better position to focus on what needs to happen at work. Yes, supporting employees and their families can be difficult, and yes, sometimes it costs money. I also know not every organization has the financial resources or size to do everything it would like to do.
That is where your community comes in. Reach out to the community your organization is actually part of, not just your community on LinkedIn, but the place where your employees live and work every day. There are nonprofits, government agencies, community organizations, and other businesses that may have resources you can tap into. There are ways to support your employees' families so they can concentrate on the job at hand and know their families are supported.
Three Things to Think About
Build your continuity plan around your people. Disasters and disruptions are constantly evolving, and your business continuity plan should evolve too. Part of that process should be understanding what your employees may need during a disruption and how their ability to respond at work may be affected by events at home.
Tap into your community. Find out who your organization can support and who can support you. Ask yourself how your company can be a small but meaningful force in your community. Relationships built before a disaster can become incredibly valuable when something happens.
Think beyond your organization. I attended the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction Conference virtually a few years ago, and I was floored by what communities in other countries were doing to prepare for the unexpected. One lesson stayed with me: don't just think about your business, think about your community. It absolutely amazed me to see what small communities around the world were doing for continuity practices. Sometimes we need to think outside the box and see what others are doing.
What Can You Do Right Now?
So, what can you, as a leader, do immediately to make your continuity plan more successful? Here are three small things that can have a big impact.
Talk to your employees and get to know them. When I worked at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), we regularly met with leadership to discuss how things were going at our level. Those conversations matter. You cannot understand what your employees may need during a disruption if you don’t understand what is happening with them during normal operations.
Ask for their ideas. Start a suggestion box or create another way for employees to tell you what they think should be addressed in the business continuity plan and other plans that will support your organization during a disaster. Get the on-the-ground facts and ideas from the people actually doing the work.
Finally, connect with your community. Reach out to one nonprofit, government agency, or community organization and let them know what your organization may need. Even if you are a large company, talking with local organizations can help you build connections and be seen as part of the community, not simply a business located there.
I hope this helps and gives you a few ideas to think about. Think outside the box, get out there, and spend time with your employees and your community.
And here's a plethora of successfully built continuity plans!
-Jason
