This week’s Joffe webinar presentation was about Business Continuity Plans. BCPs establish responsibilities and procedures to ensure business continuity after an emergency. Your BCP is not the same as Emergency Operations or Safety Plan.
The BCP works at answering these questions:
- What does leadership look like before, during, and after an emergency? If our Incident Commander is compromised, who is next in line? And after that? Joffe suggests creating a succession list of at least five leadership tiers to ensure there’s always someone at the helm.
- Where do we go if we can’t come back? Do we have formal agreements in place for a short-term solution? Long term?
- How do we continue to educate our students? Whether setting up temporary classrooms at a backup facility or teaching remotely via an online module, what will our strategy be for connecting educators with students and ensuring access to our rosters, lesson plans, and other teaching resources?
- How robust is our tech? What information and processes live where, and how can we ensure the right people access them if the primary server goes down?
- What partnerships can we foster to ensure our community thrives? How can we establish Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) to create formal agreements with facilities, supply vendors, staffing agencies, service providers, communication firms, and other resources?
Joffe has free or paid memberships providing access to its bank of resources. Create an account to view the Business Continuity slide deck and other webinar resources. They will host four more webinars this year: May 1 & 15, June 12 & 26.
