Infinite Blue has published results from its ‘How Prepared Were You – A Business Continuity Retrospective’ survey. This asked respondents about their use of business continuity and disaster recovery plans during initial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
89 percent of respondents reported having a business continuity plan in place that specifically addressed pandemic response, but when asked how complete their plan was in addressing the reality of the COVID pandemic, 27 percent said that when they reviewed that plan, they found it ‘not very useful’ or ‘not good’. Those with IT titles were most critical, with 45 percent responding that the plans in place were not actually helpful or did not function in the way they were intended.
81 percent of respondents reported that they continuously expanded and enhanced their pandemic plan as previously overlooked dependencies revealed themselves. Given the experiences and learnings over the past year responding to the pandemic, 87 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed their organization has developed a deeper commitment to comprehensive business continuity planning.
The pandemic revealed to the vast majority of organizations surveyed that the depth and sophistication of their planning was not adequate in addressing all aspects and dependencies within their business. For example, requirements for non-essential workers to work from home for months, made many businesses quickly realize they were unprepared to operate remotely.
When asked about the overall communication to employees, partners, vendors, suppliers, customers, and prospects, interestingly, only 19 percent of HR professionals strongly agreed that communication to employees was clear and timely. However, 35 percent of their business continuity and IT colleagues strongly agreed with the same thing.
Demographics
Infinite Blue surveyed 331 respondents, who worked in either business continuity management, human resources, it or risk management. They all reported being closely involved with business continuity planning and response and work in several different industries.
