Striking a chord?

This week’s national strike, depending which side of the Parliamentary fence you sit on, was either a significant event or a  “damp squib”.

The coverage focused on the level of disruption to the actual public sector services with Cabinet Minister Francis Maude saying: “Our rigorous contingency planning has been working well.”

Whilst his comments might be true for front-line services, the real victims of November 30 were UK businesses who had to suffer disruption to their trading and might not have had the opportunity to carry out such “rigorous contingency planning” because they’re busy running their own companies.

Sadly businesses were hit with employees failing to turn up for work taking unpaid leave to care for children and some transport networks were disrupted – even the iconic Mersey tunnel was closed forcing commuters to either abandon the roads or take longer journeys.

These are all symptoms of what we believe is the biggest success or risk factor in a crisis… the human factor. So often people, and the vital role they play to the successful resolution of a situation, can be over looked in the business continuity plans automated programmes can draw up. The Government’s plans appear to focused purely on the infrastructure and not the impact upon people.

That’s why we don’t use such approaches. We believe every emergency plan should tailored by our specialists to the unique characteristics of a business and ultimately be people shaped. Our clients agree and have seen the great rewards that can come from building a plan around people, as opposed to adding them in later.

Companies shouldn’t worry that they need to write War and Peace for a plan. The real benefit of a rigorous plan isn’t how thick the document is… actually we feel less is more and strip plans back to just the key tried and tested actions people need to take to carry on trading. We can do this with confidence as we understand people and how they act in a crisis, which is why we use ground-breaking behaviour change techniques to reduce the risk and deliver real business benefits.

If you’d like to learn more about how to identify risks in your business and remove them through clear planning, we’d be delighted to add you to our e-bulletin mailing list and also provide you with details of our training courses and taster sessions we’re running throughout 2012. Please email my999@treble9group.com today to be added to the list and get a copy of our top tips e-booklet.