Human Resources and Business Continuity – it’s time to work together

As an HR professional, most of your work revolves around the people in your organization. You’ll be involved in hiring, administering benefits, and providing many different kinds of advice and counsel. You depend on access to lots of information, usually in the form of employee records and other statistical data required by the government. You also need access to the people in your organization, your staff, senior management, and your constituent employees.

Now all this is fine, assuming business as usual, but what would you do if suddenly you were unable to provide HR services to your colleagues? How would you deal with the many questions that might arise? How would you deal with senior management questions? How would you handle government regulations and the reporting they typically require?

Let’s suppose that, because of an external event, such as a nearby fire or flood, the local authorities have cordoned off your building. You are unable to gain access to the building, your office, and the resources you need to manage the HR function. What steps would you take to 1) recover your ability to provide HR services, 2) gain access to the critical data you need, and 3) communicate with people in your organization?

We’ve asked a lot of questions, and perhaps the answers are obvious. Clearly there will be occasions when an incident – whether internally or externally generated – will interrupt your work. It may be only for a few minutes, say a mini power outage that shuts down your systems but doesn’t cause serious damage. Or it could be days or weeks, such as in the aftermath of a hurricane or severe winter storm. As an HR professional you provide critical services to your fellow employees, and it’s in your best interests – and the company’s – that you have the ability to recover and restore HR functions as soon as possible following a business disruption.

That’s what business continuity is all about. It’s about understanding how you operate: the activities you perform, the steps you take when performing them, and the resources – people and technology – you need to achieve your objectives. Once you know these activities, you need to identify potential risks to their continued operation. Having identified these risks, you can determine which ones present the greatest potential disruption to your operations, and your department. If possible, it’s also a good idea to correlate the operational, financial and human impact of these risks if they actually occurred. This means that a half-day disruption, for example, could result in a one- to two-day loss of productivity.

Once you have begun to analyze how you operate, the threats to your continued operations, and the potential impact to your department and the company of a disruption, you can begin to identify ways you can respond to these events. Let’s examine a few strategies:

1. Back up all your critical information. Chances are you are already doing this, as data backup is probably a service offered by your IT department. (If it’s not, get in touch with your IT director and sign up.) Be sure to look into the many low-cost plug-in storage drives that you can buy at most office supply stores. For under $50 you can buy a unit that will store 4Gb of data, which should be more than enough storage to provide you an emergency backup.
2. Ensure that your staff is cross-trained in various functions. In case some of your staff are not available, or if you are unavailable, you can rest assured that the HR function will continue because your staff can perform multiple tasks, and take over for others.
3. Have manual forms available in case of a computer system outage. HR typically runs on forms, many of which are now automated. In a computer system outage that disrupts servers containing HR applications, it’s a good idea to have hard copy versions of critical forms, especially government forms, so that you will not miss critical reporting deadlines.
4. If it’s necessary to work from home, make sure you are prepared. With the threat of an avian influenza outbreak, the potential for people staying at home for extended periods of time is high. If you and your staff are in this kind of situation, be sure that you make arrangements for you and your staff to work from home. This includes ensuring that everyone has high-speed Internet access at home, portable computers and/or home computers suitably configured for remote access to your company’s data infrastructure, and any other documentation, procedures, and forms needed to operate outside the office.
5. Identify alternate work areas in case of an evacuation or forced relocation. It may be necessary to leave your office for more than a day or two. If that is the case, it is a good idea to identify alternate workspace for you and your staff. It could be at a local hotel, or perhaps at an office your company has in another part of town, or maybe at a third-party firm’s facility that is designed for emergency relocations.
6. Have updated emergency contact numbers for staff. In an emergency you’ll want to know where your staff is, their safety, and their whereabouts. Keep an updated list of all contact numbers available – a laminated wallet-sized card is an effective tool – so you can keep in touch with your staff, company executives, and other key internal and external contacts.
7. Arrange for a conference bridge service. When you want to convene meetings of your staff, conference bridge services are handy tools for keeping people connected. Many services are available for a nominal fee.
8. Create call trees to facilitate the emergency contact process. To ensure that you can quickly contact your staff, a call tree is a cheap and effective tool. Make sure that everyone has a copy, and test it occasionally to make sure it works.
9. Arrange for primary and alternate meeting points if you have to evacuate. Suddenly you are forced to evacuate the building. Define primary and alternate meeting points, usually a few blocks from your building away from potential first responder activity, so that you can convene your staff, review your options, and decide what to do next.
10. Develop a plan for responding to emergencies. The previous activities we have described are all important, but it’s even more important to formulate a plan of action when faced with a business interruption. Whether you are able to remain in your offices, or are forced to evacuate and restart operations in another location, it is essential to have step-by-step procedures that describe what you will do to recover and restore business operations. These should be reviewed and coordinated with internal and external resources, such as the IT department, so that your needs can be met.
11. Document your plan, both electronically and in hard copy. A plan doesn’t have to be a three-inch thick binder. You may need only a page or two to compile the contact details of your staff and other internal and external contacts you need to operate. Another page or two to define the steps you’ll take in an emergency, and you’re done. Save it electronically on your system as well as your backup storage, and keep a few hard copies in your car, at home, and in your briefcase.
12. Exercise the plan. Schedule a staff meeting in a conference room, and have your staff go through the plan step-by-step to make sure it works. The worst time to see if your plan works is when the building is being evacuated! When you identify something that doesn’t make sense, fix it, and test it again to make sure it’s right. Make sure your plan is updated accordingly.

At a corporate level, be sure to get involved in business continuity initiatives. Your value as an HR profession to the business continuity process is critical. As a member of the program team, you’ll be getting involved with employee communications (before, during and after an emergency), protection of employee data and company records, providing assistance to employees in areas such as grief counseling, ensuring that government regulations are followed, and ensuring that company policies are followed. In its early years, business continuity traditionally focused on protecting and recovering technology, but today it covers the entire spectrum of business operations and governance. And the HR function is one of the most important of all.

As the HR profession progresses through the 21st century, it faces perhaps its greatest challenges. In the five years since 9/11, severe hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, the threat of global warming, and terrorist activities around the world, the profession is continually challenged to reinforce its value to business and government. The prospect of still more natural disasters looms over this country and globally, as does the threat of terrorism in the form of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear events. The prospect of an avian influenza pandemic presents yet another threat of unimaginable proportions. Both the HR and business continuity professions are at a major crossroads. Both must be able to work effectively with other related disciplines, such as physical security, information security, facilities management, emergency management and homeland security. As an HR professional, it is an ideal time to get acquainted – or reacquainted – with business continuity.