There needs to be greater focus placed on business continuity planning.
That’s according to Andria Grosvenor, Planning and Business Development Manager at the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA). She made the comments while speaking to the media on the sidelines of a Multi-Hazard Symposium on Earthquakes, Coastal Hazards and Business Continuity Planning, hosted on Friday at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre by the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport.
She revealed that while the interest in business continuity planning in the Caribbean region is on the rise, the actually planning is a far distance from where they want it to be at this time. Grosvenor made the point as she explained that, in most cases, it is the large companies with overseas head offices that have been seeking to do such planning for the future.
“But within small and medium scale enterprises, which we normally have within the Caribbean, we tend to not have a lot of business continuity and even if you have the plan, it is sometimes on somebody’s desk or on a shelf and it is never exercised. So the staff and those people who are providing the service, they don’t often know about it,” she said.
The CDEMA official added, “… It is important to ensure that you have not only a plan that would prevent the impact of hazards, but also you are looking at how do you allow your business to continue even if you are impacted. In the tourism sector we have a number of businesses that could be potentially affected if the country is impacted by a hazard, whether it is hurricane, earthquake, tsunami etc. and it is going to be very important in terms of the reputational risk of the country how that is handled by their providers, whether that is by a hotel or another business.”
During her presentation, Grosvenor said she would provide the participants with an outline of the steps to formulate a business continuity plan and present them with case studies from around the world with examples of such plans, both good and bad. Among those examples, she said, would be the 2011 earthquake in Japan and the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, so that they could harness the good things and put into practice here.
“We have a very good example in the Caribbean, where the banks in Cayman had a business continuity plan and they were able to recover very quickly. In three to five days they had their businesses back up and running after Ivan and these are some of the good practices that we can also embrace within the Caribbean region,” she added.
With that in mind, she said it is hoped that coming out of the symposium, such plans will take top priority and be in place prior to the start of the 2019 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Her remarks came as she revealed that CDEMA is already in discussions with the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport, to do a follow up workshop where they can take stakeholders through the paces of developing their plans. (JRT)