Call it disaster or emergency planning, call it contingency or business continuity planning, give it whatever grand or minor title you want, but it boils down to the same thing, writes Adrian Kingston-Jones.
Planning for business survival. It is the most fundamental of corporate activities. It encompasses sound corporate governance and the latest in management best practice. It assists companies in fulfilling their legal obligations in company law, health and safety law, data protection legislation and a whole raft of other pitfalls that also offer both corporate and personal liability if directors and managers get things wrong.
And yet some managers are still ignoring the process, and many directors are failing to adequately resource it. Why? Or, to put it another way, why should they do it?
The first reason for putting sound emergency and disaster-planning (EDP) procedures in place is to meet the responsibilities of managers and directors under company law to ensure the survival and profitability of the corporate venture. Looking at EDP planning in its wider context means more than planning for a major fire, or a September 11 ‘spectacular’. It also means examining and regularly auditing for other more ‘possible’ or ‘regular’ events, such as major white-collar crime or a significant supply chain failure. Where such an incident occurs with disastrous or catastrophic effect, modern legislation is phrased in such a way that stakeholders may well look to see whether or not managers and executives took ‘reasonable’ steps to ensure their prevention or mitigation and, where this was not done, issues of personal liability may well be pursued.
Another area where personal liability issues are coming to the fore is that of Health and Safety. Whereas with company law issues the penalty may be largely financial or professional, (ie; debarment from the right to be a director), in Health and Safety and environmental protection legislation we are seeing a trend towards custodial sentences. From the victim and society’s point of view, it must be healthy that negligent professionals can no longer hide behind the corporate skirt, nor is it acceptable anymore to argue that one has transferred the risk. Transfer the risk as you may, the ultimate responsibility will still sit on your desk.
Other areas where personal liability issues have quietly edged in include employment law, (particularly where it impacts upon immigration issues, and particularly where one is employing licensed professionals, such as contract security officers), environmental responsibility, Data Protection and Freedom of Information laws, and legislation relating to investigations. Once again, whilst Data Protection legislation may impose merely financial penalties (albeit potentially substantial ones), other areas of activity, (or rather, lack of activity), can be construed as criminal, and can lead to custodial sentences.
It might reasonably be asked at this stage, ‘yes, but what have these issues to do with emergency and disaster planning?’ The answer, quite simply, is everything. The professional director and manager have very real responsibilities to plan for all eventualities that can reasonably be foreseen to detrimentally effect the operation of their business, and to plan for the avoidance and control of incidents where their business might impact on the workforce, the local community, or society at large. Such eventualities do not need to be just the spectacular. The failure of a conveyor belt in a distribution centre for the lack of a minor spare can have far reaching consequences in an organisation with complex logistical chains, or the leakage of small quantities of effluent or product into a local stream for whatever reason can carry a significant financial and environmental cost. And both of these examples have the potential to cause catastrophic damage to both corporate and personal reputations, (not to mention careers).
In this article we have considered the whys in regard to why we should put effective emergency and disaster planning procedures in place. The underlying message is that it is in our own personal interest, as well as the corporate interest, that we face up to our own personal and corporate responsibilities.
About the writer
Adrian Kingston-Jones is Senior Consultant with BP Associates, a Security and Risk Management Consultancy based in Sandhurst, Berkshire. A Fellow of the International Institute of Security, he has been employed in the private security industry since 1980.
