Planning for the unplanned is part of our commitment to continuous improvement
Updated: Mar 24 2024
Business Continuity Planning
Whether it's a natural disaster such as an ice storm, or a serious accident in our offices, an unforeseen event can disrupt business operations at our company.
After all, in an emergency situation, our employees may not be able to come to work. Our suppliers may face a shortage of the materials you need to continue your business activities, or demand for our services may simply decline.
No one can predict the future; however, we are ready with a sound business continuity plan. Having a good plan in place shows our employees, shareholders and customers that we are a proactive organization; it improves overall efficiency in our company and helps us allocate the right financial and human resources to keep your firm up and running during a serious disruption.
At the heart of our Business Continuity Plan is the Emergency Preparedness Team. The following individuals are currently named, and assigned specific roles & responsibilities as members of the team;
Paul-Andre Savoie, President & CEO, Team Lead
Nicolas Beaupré, Vice-President & CRO
In the order above, these employees of the company have the authority to declare a situation of emergency and are entrusted to make sure the plan is up to date and can be put into practice at all times.
As with all other aspects of our business, the way we plan for an emergency relies on the following:
- A deep and unified understanding of our organizational objectives
- Regular research on the risks we face (at least semi-annually)
- Identifying and documenting creative alternatives to unique challenges
- A clear and reliable decision-making process
Supplier may be required to agree that for the proper performance of a service, data backup, contingency, business continuity and disaster recovery planning, testing and demonstrated validation of readiness, recovery and implementation activities, are required.
Below, we list the high level goals for which our Emergency Preparedness Team is responsible;
Planning and implementation
- Developing and maintaining the Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
- Establishing alert levels and monitors
- Developing training and cross-training plans
- Identifying key business partners such as suppliers and clients and determine if they too, have a BCP
- Assessing the potential financial impacts, and contingencies during an emergency situation
- Ensuring and adequate amount of essential supplies are available
- Identifying and training local site manager(s) as needed for implementing the plan
- Performing trial runs of the plan, on at least an annual interval
Establishing policies & procedures
- Compensation during absences, return to work procedures, telecommuting, flexible work hours,
- travel restrictions
- The chain of command in an emergency situation, and ensuring all those impacted are aware of their roles
- Authorized & automatic emergency situation trigger points, and which triggers enact what parts of the BCP
- Emergency safety policies for the workplace. (For example, in the event of a pandemic)
Defining communication plans
- Maintain good communications and manage relations with all staff levels
- Advise senior management of emergency situations
- Instil importance of the BCP throughout the organization
- Liaise with local government agencies such as Health Canada and Public Safety Canada
- Are timely and accurate, sent to all impacted stakeholders (employees, clients, suppliers)
- Educate staff about possible emergencies
- Utilize the best forms of technology to send communications, with redundancies if applicable
- Help prepare employee training on the subject
- Assist local site managers with the implementation of the plan
In our BCP, we make sure to keep the following guidelines up to date regularly
- Standard Operating Procedures
- Surveillance/Attendance
- Essential Services Delivery
- Human Resources Planning / Allocation
- Communication plans / Methods
- Testing the plan
We review and actualize our essential services descriptions.
- We identify and update which services must be maintained, listing the plans for continuity or re-start of each essential service or function. This includes:
A description of the service - The individuals responsible for implementing the emergency action plan
- Identifying backup individuals to undertake the action plan
- Listing and prioritizing the business impact resulting from the failure of this service (staff relocation, alternate resources)
- A clear service restoration / contingency action plan during the emergency
- Which communication plan must be triggered by this service outage
Identifying and estimating the essential resource needs to establish nominal performance levels of the service - Estimating the time required to return to a non-urgent state following the outage of this service
We currently use the following criteria to determine if a service or function meets the definition 'essential';
A service when not delivered, creates an impact on the health and safety of individuals.
A service that may lead to the failure of a business unit if activities are not performed in a specified time period.
A service which must be performed to satisfy regulatory requirements.
A service where if not performed, the impact may be immediate or may occur over a certain time period.
Each essential service is cross referenced against which part of the business would be most impacted during an emergency;- Employee Safety
- Customers
- Company Financials
- Company Reputation
- Legal
Based on the above considerations, each essential service is rated as to the degree to which each could negatively impact the company and its stakeholders by having an assigned "degree of criticalness":
- Critical: Essential services/functions
- Major: Services that can be suspended for a short period of time (for example, services that can be suspended for one month).
- Normal: Services that can be suspended for an extended period of time. This may require a corporate overview.
During an emergency situation, our company may be fored to modify, reduce, or even eliminate specific essential services to cope with the impacts of the emergency. These impacts may be felt across the organization or localized to specific business units. Our business may experience an essential service degradation or disruption in our operations due to:
- High staff absenteeism
- Critical hosting server outage
- Unavailability of supplies
- Interruptions to services like power, transportation and internet access (communications)
- Personal safety (on site or remote)
- Personal health
- Planned attendance (physical or virtual)
- Actual attendance (physical or virtual)
- Workload assignment & completion
- Vocal, video and digital communications
We maintain a BCP preparedness checklist, reviewing it every 6 months, which covers the following dimensions;
- Impact our business
- Impact our employees and customers
- Be reduced by establishing policies to be implemented
- Require the allocation of resources to protect our employees and customers
- Require specific communications to our employees, customers and employees
- Require a coordinating with external organizations within our community
Our Emergency Preparedness Team is responsible to meet at least semi-annually in order to review the Business Continuity Plan, monitoring its progress, and update as needed (with electronic version control).
The goal of this semi-annual review is to ensure that the team has an understanding of the overall corporate impact of an emergency. Once a year, the BCP is tested to ensure that it:
- Addresses all critical elements
- Is consistent for all business units/departments
- Contains the latest information and procedures
- Is practical and pragmatic
Langue Officielle
Ce document est une traduction française d’une version originale anglaise. En cas de disparité dans l’interprétation d’un texte, la version anglaise prévaudra.
This document is a translation of an original english version. In case of disparity in the interpretation of any texts, the english version will take precedence.