BCP stands for Business Continuity Planning and as it’s Business Continuity & Resilience Awareness week we thought we’d share more on this important aspect of respecting and protecting our business. So here’s an example for you to bring it to life…
It’s 11am on a Wednesday morning and the Teams call you’re on suddenly drops or that email you’re about to send disappears. Suddenly you receive word that you have to suspend all activity on your company-issued laptop and mobile. What do you do now?
A resilient business is one that has the ability to respond quickly and effectively to an incident or disruption, engage recovery strategies and adapt to the new environment following that incident. It encompasses the principles of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Crisis Management.
How does this work at Carnival UK?
At Carnival UK, these principles sit under the umbrella of ‘Operational Resilience’, a team within our Maritime department comprised of the ‘dynamic-duo’ Nicola Butler-Moore and Rhi Hales.
For BCP, the business has been divided into Functions (similar to departments), of which there are currently 38, each with their own dedicated Business Continuity Coordinator and accountable owner. The Operational Resilience team work with each of the Functions to train, support and guide these individuals through the annual review cycle where critical activities are established and the impact of the loss or compromise of each of the below key elements is understood. From this, plans are created to support your function through an incident or disruption and into the recovery phase.
For Crisis Management, CUK has a Crisis Team of around 150 people from across the business who are on call to support our Guests, Crew & People 24/7/365 in the event of a crisis. The Operational Resilience team are responsible for the framework of this response structure as well as the training and exercising of this team to make sure each role holder is crisis-ready.
Improving emergency notifications
It will be of no surprise that CUK is heavily reliant on Technology for much of the activity we do day-to-day, especially to enable us to communicate effectively with each other through Teams and Outlook. But what if the ability to communicate was taken away from us due to a system outage or cyber-attack? What if there was a fault identified with Carnival House during the night that rendered the building temporarily unsafe to occupy?
Over the coming months the Operational Resilience team will be implementing a communication platform called OnSolve which will enable communications to be sent to all employees, via a range of contact methods, at the click of a button. This will ensure that we are able to keep you informed of critical messages during disruptive incidents. We’ll need your help with testing these notifications – keep an eye on the Weekly Update email for details coming soon.
With all of the above in mind, it’s time to ask yourself – are you crisis ready?
Consider the following;
- Are your contact details in myHR correct and kept up to date?
- Do you know who your BCP Coordinator is?
- Do you know how to escalate an incident?
- Do you know what’s expected of you?
If you have any other questions or want more information head to our new Business Continuity Planning page.