What is the difference between Business Continuity Management and Emergency Management?
Business Continuity Management:
- Preparing for any incident
- Loss of People, Premises, Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Reputation, Resources
Emergency Management:
- How you respond to an incident
- Crisis Team, Communications, Interactive Action Lists
Business Continuity Management is what I would like to spend my time doing. Crisis Management is what I actually spend my time doing…
Feedback from BCP Builder Community on LinkedIn:
Included in Business Continuity Management
- Crisis Management and many other components should be part of the Business Continuity Plan/Program.
- Business Continuity Management contains Incident Management, Emergency Management and all associated impact reducing corrective controls. Or perhaps “The shit has happened, this is what we are doing now” as opposed to “oh shit!….”
- Business Continuity is the preparation made to ensure a smooth effective, efficient and well laid out plan for Crisis Management.
- It is unfortunate that many businesses do not basically prepare for natural disaster, even with the tools and knowledge available. For a business to have overall protection of continuity, they must prepare for any event, not just for commerce.
- There will always be a Crisis but the question is how well you have planned for it, no matter what the crisis is.
Tools
- Emergency Notification System
- Incident Management App
- Some organizations use formal email and others use Social Media tools like WhatsApp or Twitter.
Different Disciplines
- Business Continuity is an enabling discipline. Emergency Management is a controlling discipline. The former enables an organization to continue a level of effective operation, whilst at the same time the latter takes the impact event under control. Teach that difference and your organization will apply both people and budgets effectively.
Example
- The relationship between Business Continuity and Crisis Management is often confused.
- Business Continuity is the capability of an organization to continue delivery of products and services, following a disruption.
- Crisis Management is a holistic management process that identifies potential impacts that threaten an organization. It provides the capability for an effective response that safeguards reputation, brand and value creating activities, as well as effectively restoring operational capabilities.
- Would you activate your Business Continuity plans if your organization was savaged in the media over a reputation issue? No, but you would activate your Crisis Management plans to deal with it.
- “Being savaged in the media over a reputation issue” is not a Business Continuity issue if business operations have not been disrupted. However, it would trigger a Crisis Management response because it may threaten the organization’s reputation or brand.
- Similarly, the Chief Financial Officer being accused of fraud would be Crisis Management not Business Continuity. Under Crisis Management, the organization might issue communications which would safeguard the reputation, brand and value creating activities.
Same, same – but different
- Crisis Management is keeping the organization alive – given that a Crisis impacts at a strategic level.
- Business Continuity Management is about keeping the systems going, having a recovery plan in place and following that process.
- However, Business Continuity Management and Crisis Management are very different. Given its impact, its factors and its reach, each crisis is unique. Therefore, you will require a specific team, with specific skills, to respond in a specific way to manage a specific crisis.
- Too many organizations invest in Business Continuity Management systems, forget their people, then fail to understand why they crashed the boat when a crisis struck.
- Business Continuity Management gives you a landscape with checkpoints, good Crisis Management gives you the map and compass to make the decisions of what way to go.
- Business Continuity is the end goal and Crisis Management is the long game. You need to prepare for every possible scenario and have solid, tested responses for each. There is no deviation in survival.
If you want to increase your Organizational Resilience, start with preparing a Business Continuity Plan and check out BCP Builder’s Business Continuity Planning Templates.
