Business Continuity Plan Template

A business continuity plan outlines the instructions and procedures a business should follow after some disaster. Disruptive events like floods and fires can interrupt your business practices.

It would be best if you had a plan to handle these situations and effectively get back to work.

Give your organization the tools it needs to operate effectively despite any disruptions – you never know when a disaster can strike, but you can be prepared.

Table of Contents

• What is a Business Continuity Plan?
• Critical Components of a Business Continuity Plan
• Different Types of Business Continuity Plans
• How to Write a Business Continuity Plan
• Business Continuity Plan Sample
• Benefits of a Business Continuity Plan
• How Often Should a Business Continuity Plan Be Tested?
• Business Continuity Plan FAQs

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan is a document that sets forth your organization’s strategies for dealing with a disaster. These procedures help you to resume business quickly and reduce downtime and lost revenue.

It covers essential processes like asset protection, human resources issues, and how to deal with business partners.

When to Use a Business Continuity Plan?

You want to create a business continuity plan before you need it. The point of this document is to be ahead of the game. You do not want to respond to a disaster without a set plan. Business continuity planning is critical to a successful response to a disaster.

Once your continuity plan is in place, you may need to use it in disasters such as:

• Fires
• Floods
• Cyberattacks
• Tornados
• Hurricanes
• Major Storms
• Earthquake
• Major IT or internet disruption

A business continuity plan is as crucial to your company as a business plan.

Critical Components of a Business Continuity Plan

You’ll need to incorporate several elements into each business continuity plan. For example, begin with assessing risks that can interrupt your business. You also must clearly define how your organization will communicate in a crisis and define roles and responsibilities.

Additionally, continuous testing and training will help staff members prepare for emergencies.

Risk and Potential Business Impact

It would be best to start with the business impact analysis for a business continuity and disaster plan. This section will list potential internal and external risks. This might include a disruption due to a flood or storm, an IT breach, or the loss of a significant supplier.

You can use this analysis to estimate the time and cost of business recovery.

Planning an Effective Response

Don’t leave anything out. Meet leaders and key staff members to consider any disruptions your business could face. Ask participants to assume the worst and consider ways to recover from each scenario. Once you have a comprehensive list, rank business priorities such as revenue, customer protection, regulatory adherence, and other concerns that matter most to your company.

Once you have a completed list, link each item to applications, facilities, and resources needed to keep them up and running. Next, you can begin to identify recovery strategies and estimate costs. In particular, IT will depend on the list of critical applications to prioritize recovery following an emergency.

Roles and Responsibilities

The last thing you want to do in an emergency is have everyone wondering who’s in charge. By creating a business continuity team, you define the point person for every location and department in your company.

The business continuity management team should meet regularly to update the plan and discuss ongoing training and testing. Additionally, high-level leaders must champion a business continuity plan for it to be effective.

Communication

Clear, effective communication can reassure team members across the organization. This will give everyone the confidence to step up and respond appropriately. You also need a communication strategy to coordinate suppliers and minimize customer dissatisfaction.

Include key contacts so your business partners and customers know who to contact in case of a disruption.

Having a prewritten press release and social media posts for various scenarios can take the pressure off the BCP team and allow them to concentrate on executing the plan.

Create a separate communication plan to keep everyone in the loop during a crisis.

Uninterrupted Access to Business Resources and IT Operations

In an interconnected world, remote technology can enhance your business continuity plan. Adopt software and solutions that facilitate remote work. This will allow team members to work from a hotel room, home, or elsewhere.

You’re already ahead of the game if your organization espouses a hybrid work environment. Chances are your people already work from different locations.

As well as uninterrupted access to business resources, your business continuity plan should include how to access IT systems.

For example, do you have a backup data center for redundancy? How easily can IT or other team members switch to the backup site for various apps?

As part of the business continuity planning process, it’s essential to gauge how your infrastructure can respond to a rapid hardware failure, network disruption, or data loss.

Testing and Training

As you write various plans using a business continuity plan template, there’s one thing to remember. Your organization will rely heavily on this document in case of an internal or external threat.

Therefore, you need a robust plan with detailed guidance on communication protocols, disaster recovery, and accessing data and applications remotely.

Conduct rigorous testing and training to avoid issues and catch gaps in your BCP. If you want your staff to respond effectively during a disruption, you must train them about their role in all facets of the BCP.

Different Types of Business Continuity Plans

You can use a business continuity plan template to define how your organization will handle crisis management and communication in an emergency. It’s important to account for emergency response instructions and capture essential information to get your IT resources up and running quickly since they’re crucial in all recovery efforts.

You’ll also need a business continuity plan (BCP) that addresses how to create, maintain, and execute your business continuity strategies. You can get business continuity plans dedicated to each of the below, but our template can cover each:

Crisis Management 

Crisis management defines how your organization will respond to an emergency. Your business continuity plan for this function should contain policies that minimize loss and focus on mitigating damage to profitability and reputation. The executive team will spearhead the crisis management plan executed by operational teams. Meanwhile, the business continuity management team will facilitate the smooth operation of the plan from a tactical perspective.

Crisis Communications 

There are 5Cs in crisis communications: care, commitment, continuity, competency, and community. A crisis communications business continuity plan should identify leaders and provide important details about staying connected when normal communication channels close. Drafting emergency messages ahead of time will facilitate social media updates and press releases, as well as internal instructions.

Emergency Response

Account for several phases of emergency management, including preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery. You may need to relocate when your organization faces a business disruption or natural disaster. So, include procedural information such as where, when, and how leadership and key staff will access alternate resources. The finished document should integrate with your emergency action plan.

IT disaster recovery

An IT disaster recovery business continuity plan isn’t just for software companies. Every corporation and organization should have a detailed IT business continuity plan, including running essential systems during and after a major disruption, targeting IT operations, and documenting recovery objectives, roles, and responsibilities.

Business continuity

This document outlines how to create and maintain your business continuity plan. Include the business analysis impact, plan development, leadership, and project management for your overall BCP framework. Overall, focus on risk mitigation and recovery efforts.

How to Write a Business Continuity Plan

Writing your plan can seem daunting, but it does not have to be. You can create your document easily with a free business continuity plan template. You can even use our document builder to build your plan in minutes. Your business continuity plan should include the following:

Step 1 – Purpose of the plan

The plan should address the scope of its effect. Does the plan cover your entire business? Is it for specific departments?

Your employees and managers need to know how this plan will be applied. It should clearly state over whom the policy applies so everyone knows what is expected of them after a disaster.

Step 2 – Identify Key Business Areas

After a disaster, it will be difficult or impossible to go back to normal immediately. Identify the critical aspects of your business.

What are your main revenue-generating products and services, and how would they be impacted if you could not deliver them? What do you need to function? What operations are critical, and what can wait until later?

Would this significantly impact your revenue or customer base if these things were undeliverable for some time?

This section is not about convenience but necessity. Hone in on these critical functions to determine a priority list for your business continuity plan.

Step 3 – Define the Crisis Team

People must know who is in charge during an emergency and their contact information. There should be no doubt about who will call the shots about essential business decisions.

These individuals will lead the local response and may be responsible for a more comprehensive response strategy outside the disaster’s immediate area.

The crisis team should be identified by role and title. This ensures that everyone knows who is in charge if there is a personnel change. Training and letting these key team members know their positions should a disaster occur is critically important.

Step 4 – Create a Crisis Communication Plan

In addition to identifying the team in charge, the business continuity plan should outline how individuals communicate. Standard methods of communication may be inaccessible.

If you are without email, how will you handle communication? How will you handle customer ordering and fulfillment if your computer system is down? Ensure you include the name of who is in charge of customer communications and their contact information.

To test your processes, it would be best to draft sample emergency messages before a crisis. This could include press releases, interviews, or even social media updates.

Step 5 – Relocation and Recovery Operations

You may need to relocate to an alternative worksite in a natural disaster or business disruption. Include the procedure information and what resources will be required.

Step 6 – Review and Testing

It’s critical to ensure that your business continuity plan is effective and stays up to date. Ensure you include who is in charge of this and how often the plan will be reviewed and tested.

Step 7 – Plan Deactivation

You should also include who is responsible for deactivating the business continuity plan and what the procedure is. This ensures that someone can decide to get the company back to normal workings.

Business Continuity Plan Sample

Below you can find a business continuity plan sample to help you start drafting your plan:

Benefits of a Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan defines leadership roles in a disaster and focuses on employee and customer safety. It also enables your company to recover more quickly in a disaster.

Here’s a closer look at the significant advantages of writing and maintaining a business continuity plan.

A Well-Defined Leadership Protocol For a Disaster

Senior leadership directs the business continuity plan and sanctions communication protocols for the company. Individual department leaders create continuity plans for IT, security, HR, payroll, legal, and other functions.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to assign a project manager dedicated to maintaining the BCP and setting up training for new and current staff members.

A More Efficient Return to Normal Business Operations

A BCP could differentiate between continued operations and financial disaster in an emergency. Returning to business operations quickly can prevent customers from defecting to competitors.

A business continuity plan template makes planning for contingencies in various scenarios easy and addresses the most critical roles and responsibilities needed to keep your company running.

Above all, having a business continuity plan minimizes downtime and limits confusion during critical situations.

Increased Employee Safety

The BCP should always consider the health and safety of employees above business objectives. Remember that the safety and wellness of loved ones will be at the top of everyone’s minds.

With remote access to key systems, leaders and other team members can balance the needs of their families, coworkers, and customers.

Reduction in Lost Time and Lost Revenue

Unmitigated disruptions can financially weaken an organization quickly. Business continuity plans account for all factors needed for continued operations. The more effort you put into planning, the more time and money you can save.

So, ensure a reliable backup plan for essential IT systems and enable remote access to customer, product, and company data to keep the revenue stream flowing.

Ability to Quickly Implement IT Fixes

Natural and manufactured disasters typically involve system disruptions. To remain functional, build redundancy into your critical systems. This will allow you to implement essential fixes to hardware and software assets.

How Often Should a Business Continuity Plan Be Tested?

A business continuity plan should be constantly reviewed and updated to align with current business processes. You should check your business continuity plan at least twice a year, but this could be more dependent on the size of your business and how often your systems and processes change.

For most businesses, you’ll want to follow the below sample schedule:

Review Your Checklist – Twice a Year

You should review your business continuity plan twice yearly to ensure it is still relevant to your current business processes and status. You should also ensure the plan aligns with your business goals and objectives.

Put It Into Practice – Once a Year

Test your plan by putting it into practice. You should make sure that your plan is solid when put into action, and the best way to do this is by conducting emergency drills at least once a year.

Think of it like practicing fire drills at school.

Formal Review – Every Other Year

Gather relevant teams and stakeholders of your business and sit down to review the business continuity plan every other year. This doesn’t have to be overly time-consuming, but it should help you identify any weaknesses or red flags in your plan.

Comprehensive Review – Every Other Year

Separate from the formal review, this one fully delves into the plan. It should look closely at every aspect and ensure everything is up to date with current business processes.

Mock Recovery Test – Every Two or Three Years

This is an in-depth test of your business continuity plan and is the best way to ensure your plan works and hasn’t any potential failings. As this is time-consuming, it doesn’t have to happen frequently but should ensure that all stakeholders sign off on the continuity plan.

You need to consider all disaster scenarios and if you can manage them effectively. Ensure your plan is ready to tackle any problematic or surprising situations.

Business Continuity Plan FAQs