Chemical spills, explosions, machine accidents and other workplace safety incidents may harm not only workers but also operations. The company may need to close down all or part of the workplace for cleanup, repairs and investigations. It may need to replace damaged equipment, materials and machinery. And it may have to make up for the production losses of injured workers. These disruptions could cause operations to slow down or even grind to a complete halt. And once a company suffers a blow like that, it might not fully recover. That’s where a business continuity plan comes in.

The Function of Business Continuity Plans

Business continuity plans enable companies to continue to function after workplace incidents with the least possible disruption until normal operations can resume. But surprisingly, many organizations don’t have such plans. Even if a company does have a business continuity plan for general emergencies, such as floods, pandemics and power outages, that plan may not be set up to deal with the impacts of a workplace safety incident.

Business continuity plans are typically created by senior management committees. Safety coordinators may serve on these committees. But even if they don’t, safety coordinators have an important role in business continuity planning. You need to make sure that your company’s plan is designed to deal with the effects of workplace safety incidents and not just with general emergencies.

The Importance of Business Continuity Plans

Many if not most companies have emergency management plans that address how the company will prevent emergencies or deal with them if they occur. Such plans typically include response measures designed to limit the impact of and help the company recover from emergencies. In fact, under OSHA (and Canadian OHS) laws, many companies are required to have to such plans.

Although emergency management plans and business continuity plans are related, their goals are different. An emergency response plan is designed to save lives, prevent injuries and minimize property damage; a business continuity plan is designed to enable the company to continue to meets its business and legal obligations in the aftermath of a crisis.

Without a business continuity plan, a safety incident could cause a company to lose significant revenue. For example, the incident may disrupt production causing the company to default on contractual obligations to customers. To prevent such harm to the company’s brand, reputation and customer relations, business continuity plans do two key things:

• Spell out the steps, measures and arrangements needed to ensure the continuous delivery of critical services and products; and
• Identify the resources needed to support operations continually, including personnel, information, equipment, finances and infrastructure.

Conclusion

Next week, we’ll look at the voluntary standards a company can use to establish its own business continuity plan and evaluate the plan’s effectiveness.

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