
Considerations When Planning a Remote Exercise
As we know, many organisations have the majority, if not all, of their staff, working from home in as close to ‘business as usual’ mode as possible. Business as usual includes compliance, and ensuring and maintaining the planned approach. One aspect of this is business continuity (BC) and exercising. URM has run a number of highly effective BC exercises in the last month and this blog will look at some of the key learning points derived from those engagements.
Before we go any further, it is worth stating why we believe now is a good time to conduct BC exercises. Firstly, most of the people/teams involved have ‘time’ to contribute and secondly, now is the perfect opportunity to generate far more engagement and feedback than is typical, thus leading to a greater understanding and improvements.
The mere fact that most, if not all, staff are working remotely demonstrates that your mobile strategy is working. However, your BC response is much wider than just your mobile strategy. Many of the types of disruption we are preparing for, such as flood, fire, an IT outage or sickness bug, won’t adhere to any calendar and therefore practising an exercise where everyone is remotely connected is extremely valid. In addition, it is reasonable to assume that response and recovery teams are likely to be dispersed during an incident, consequently, communicating effectively and efficiently will be critical to a successful incident response. As such, now is the perfect time to run a remote exercise and test your resilience.
So what are the challenges when planning a remote exercise?
Here are the key points for you to consider:
The validity and effectiveness of remote exercising has been clearly demonstrated in the response that URM has received from organisations in the last few weeks. They have proved to be an excellent use of time; with sessions providing greater engagement and feedback, and contributing to key lessons learned and improvement opportunities.