5 Ways to Engage Staff in Disaster Recovery Program
Written by Kirk Drake
Let’s be honest, many of your employees probably think BCP is for the geek squad in IT. Power goes out – call IT. Storm approaching? Call IT. And while IT serves a critical role in virtually every credit union recovery effort, those credit unions with the highest rate of success during critical events have expanded their programs from Disaster Recovery (DR – aka Systems/Technology recovery) efforts to a distributed program embracing people, processes and technologies throughout the organization. So how did these CU leaders engage their staff to not only develop BCP plans but to also be actively pursuing ways to increase the effectiveness of these plans on a continuous basis?
Educate
Before you can expect eager BCP participants, you have ensure they know what the plan is. Does your staff know that you have a BCP? Have you communicated the difference between DR (IT) and BCP (organizational)? Do they know you have a Pandemic plan? What about those last two incidents you successfully recovered from? Communicating at every opportunity creates a highly visible BCP program to which your staff will naturally gravitate towards. Education creates knowledge, knowledge creates intelligence, and Intelligence generates understanding and a desire to know more. See the cycle?