Human Resources

The role of Human Resources in business continuity is becoming more and more important as employers realize that their single most import asset in the company is their employees. Classic business continuity used to give great emphasis on protection of data and information system. Modern business continuity experts agree that while IT and data preservation is important, it plays a subservient role to employee continuity. Aside from the obvious legal requirements for employee health and life safety in the work place, employee continuity is critical because it is the employees who do the actual work in any business. If data is preserved without employee interaction, the data will do nothing to ensure continuity of the critical business processes. However, an employee may still be effective, even without the data.

HR and Business Continuity

Although there are slight variations across the industry, many HR departments find themselves in charge of the following continuity-related duties.

• Alternative staffing plans. How do you ensure your business is operationally viable when 40% of your staff is unable to come to work?


• Employee benefits continuance for long-term recovery from disaster-related injury while at work.


• Employee emergency training and drills to ensure your employees know what to do. (UWCERT: Link Here) (EHS Forewarned Program: link Here)


• Employee 72-hour kits. Decide whether or not you will provide them or encourage your employees to bring their own to work. (Family Preparedness: Link Here)


• Next of Kin notification plan. How would you notify an employee's family of the employee's injury or death?


• Post-Disaster communication. You must keep your employees informed regarding the status of your physical office. Is it open or not? Are they able to approach by regular routes or is there a detour they must take? Should they report to an alternate location?


• Policies related to over-time. What incentives will you offer employees to work over-time to respond to your company's disaster?


• Emergency Planning for special needs employees. If you are in a building with elevators, do you have a way to safely evacuate an employee who is mobility-impaired? What provisions have you made to take care of any special needs employees in the even of a disaster?

The above list is just a sample of the variety of challenges an HR department or manager may have to work with. As with all aspects of business continuity, these are best researched and planned for as much as possible ahead of time.

If you would like to research more, consider searching the internet for keyword combinations such as "HR AND business continuity" or "HR AND Preparedness". Additionally, the University of Washington's Office of Emergency Management has a recent study it has posted on emergencies, preparedness and special needs populations. This study may be found at: http://www.washington.edu/admin/business/oem/special_needs_resources/