PERSONNEL ISSUES
The Importance of a Human
Resources Commitment to BCP
By RALPH PETTI, MBCI, CBCP
In today’s world, all organizations in an enterprise environment need to work together to create a holis- tic response to a disaster event. For many years, groups like operations,
information technology and finance have
been key focal for points for preparing for
events. Lately, there seems to have been
a greater focus on the some of the internal business management groups of many
companies – including human resources,
personnel and other similarly employee-focused departments within a company.
This was evidenced as the need for disaster recovery planning and, later, business
continuity planning, had been accepted as
being the domain of operations/financial
organizations. Most companies provided
funding for disaster recovery solutions and
empowered their information technology
organizations to institute such programs
“to keep the company running.” While
budgets have always been tight, taking 2-4
percent of one’s operations budget to fund
a workable and practical disaster recovery
plan, it was always a reasonable request to
make of management.
Over the past two decades, with the
advent of several notable global tragedies (i.e., Hurricane Andrew in 1992
and the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, among others), companies
needed to address a more holistic plan
in order to continue business operations.
Management reached out to other business
organizations, and their supply chain partners, to begin to understand if they would
all be able to recover, how quickly they
could be able to recover and what requirements would be necessary to help them all
prepare for contingencies.
manner in which a company conducts
its business. More importantly, the areas
of human resources, personnel and other
such management organizations have
always focused on the well-being and protection of their employees at such times.
Did they succeed?
Think about it. You are at work and
something happens that captures the attention of the local media or results in a call
from a colleague at work to your home.
Your family tries to call you but there is no
answer at your desk or on your cell phone.
They call your boss and that person may
also not be available. Naturally, a next step
would be to call the main number of the
company and ask for someone in charge.
You would most likely be directed to the
human resources department for an accurate update. At the time of a disaster event,
the operations and information technology
departments would naturally be focused
on the recovery of vital resources. The
business departments will be focused on
relocating staff and making sure they can
communicate in to conduct some level of
business. All other organizations will have
their assigned tasks and responsibilities to
carry forward. Will the human resources
organization be capable of being a central
authority for information and action to
ensure that the employees, and ultimately,
their families, stay safe, informed and vital
to any disaster response?
Human Resource’s Response
Human resources departments have
always seemed to be on the periphery of
becoming directly involved in the preparation for events which could impact the
Human Capital Management
Human capital management is the term
that has emerged in the new millennium as
the manner in which companies assess and
act upon the protection of their employees
and key supply chain partners. While this
term has been viewed as a much better term
than simply “human collateral,” the point
of the matter is that an en masse view of
the re-engagement of all employees, with
the priority of their safety, is paramount to
any company.
Some companies are even instituting
certain forms of personal recovery solutions that enable their employees to protect their families and possessions. This
developing technology can help to assure-employees can go to work at the time of
a disaster knowing their families are safe.
In this instance, you have a fully engaged
employee when you need them the most!
One definition of human capital man-
agement, per Wikipedia, states: ”Human
capital management refers to the stock of
competences, knowledge and personality
attributes embodied in the ability to per-
form labor as to produce economic value.”
One keyword in this sentence is to “per-
form labor” At the time of a disaster event,
what will it take to have your employees
“perform labor?”
When an organization takes the time
and effort to put together a business con-
tinuance plan, they are no doubt consid-
ering the well-being of their employees at
the outset. Taken further, this plan could
include the extended reach maintaining
the employee’s key contact information,
should that employee choose to provide
such information. If the employee chooses
not to provide such information, they need
to understand that efforts to contact their
next of kin or other contacts provided not
be possible. It is up to the employee at that
point to assume their own personal respon-
sibility for incidents where the advisement
of loved ones would have been necessary.
Case in point, during the California
wildfires in 2009, one of our clients had
to contact all of their employees to advise
their employees not to come to work – due
to the proximity of the wildfires to their
office. They were only 99 percent successful in doing so as a few of their employees did not provide anything beyond a cell
phone number of a home phone number.
In either case, after the made a credible attempt to contact the employee, the
employees did venture to work and were
in danger due to their lack of received
information.
The above example was based on the
BC/DR plan that was owned by the operations organization. Had the HR department
been more fully engaged on the front-end
of this planning, they may have asked
tougher questions, or at least, been more
