Just because a natural, man-made or other type of disaster has never happened within your enterprise doesn’t mean it never will, but it can be challenging to convince the C-Suite to invest heavily in planning for the unknown. So where should you start? Ideally, according to Diane Mack, CEM, CHPP, University Director of Emergency Management and Continuity for Indiana University, you should start at the top.
“Between our campuses, across the state, we have business continuity plans for each and every department – more than 900 plans in all,” she says. “If we didn’t have top-down support, departments 100 miles away from the emergency management team wouldn’t pay any attention to us. This is a massive effort that will never be fully completed – personnel, policy and politics all change frequently, and having leadership willing to stick with emergency planning and enforce training and response planning throughout those changes is key.”