By Sam | March 5, 2014

12 Super Easy Ways To Keep Your Credit Union BCP Alive – Comments Wanted!

Do you feel like Business Continuity Planning is taking a backseat in your Credit Union?  Do other projects get priority on resources?  What can you do to get BCP embedded in your organization on a daily basis?  It takes planning and deliberate actions to create a culture that naturally looks for ways to continuously improve operational resiliency.

The key to keeping your Credit Union BCP alive is actually quite simple. You have to keep it in front of your team. Talk about it, make it fun, exercise! Once you get folks engaged, don’t lose the momentum.  Keep the Credit Union BCP on the calendar monthly or at a minimum quarterly.  Send assignments out to challenge users.

Here are 12 things to get you started.

1. Access the plan from home – you may have password vaults at work that give access with the touch of a finger.  These aren’t generally used in homes.  Are people able to access the plans from home?  Does the user remember his/her password? Have an after hours drill!
2. Have all employees update Emergency Contact information.  Ensure each has included alternate phone numbers, emails and any other helpful information.
3. Perform a test of your Call Tree.  What is the success/failure rate?  What challenges were faced?  Any improvements that could be made for better success?
4. Check the expiration dates on your emergency supplies.  Don’t forget to budget for replacements and upgrades to your kits.
5. Test a critical department function from an alternate processing location.  Are you able to run it beginning to end without any issue?  If challenges were encountered, identify resolution and retest.
6. Involve employees in plan review that have not been involved in the setup.  Do the Business Processes identified in the Business Impact Analysis make sense as defined?  Maybe some updates need to be made to systems used or alternate processing?
7. Practice an evacuation.  This should be a SURPRISE – don’t wait for optimal weather either!  Do employees know where to meet?  How about the alternate location?  How quickly are departments able to account for staff?
8. Annual Tabletop Exercise – perform your exercise with your Business Continuity Planner.  Don’t forget to take your lessons learned back to your departments.  Though these exercises can’t involve all staff, the information is beneficial for all!  It’s also a good idea to send different people from the departments each year.  The more folks you involve in planning and testing, the more prepared everyone is for an actual event.
9. Disaster Recover Exercise – challenge yourselves and increase the scope of your exercise each year.  Include the least experienced employees along with your written procedures.  Are they able to perform the functions as needed?  Think about it, these employees might be the only ones available at the time of an event.  If they can use the documented procedures successfully, you’ve done a great job documenting!
10. Perform your annual robbery and bomb threat training.  Staff always needs a refresher to increase the muscle memory.
11. Review and update Vendor Contact lists.  Do you have new vendors?  Maybe phone numbers or connections have changed?  Get details from your staff as well.
12. Provide information to staff regarding your Crisis Communication Plan.  Is everyone aware that they are not to talk to the media?  Who is the official media contact?

If you have other ideas, please share!  We’re always looking for more ways for plans to be kept current, relative and accessible to all.