If a major disruption affected your business tomorrow, would your organisation know exactly what to do?
Having a business continuity plan may give you some confidence, but is having a plan really enough? What if a critical supplier suddenly becomes unavailable, an important system goes down, or key employees cannot continue working as usual?
These situations can quickly expose weaknesses that may not be obvious during normal operations. A plan may exist, but critical activities may not be prioritised, employees may not understand their responsibilities, and important dependencies may have been overlooked.
That is why preparing for operational disruptions requires more than simply creating a continuity plan. In this article, we look at five common mistakes businesses make when preparing for disruptions and what they can do to avoid them.
1. Failing to Test and Update the Continuity Plan
Creating a business continuity plan is an important first step, but having a document does not mean the business is prepared. A plan that has not been tested may contain instructions that no longer match how the organisation actually operates.
People may have changed roles. New systems may have been introduced. Suppliers may have changed, or teams may now work differently. When these changes are not reflected in the plan, employees may struggle to follow it when a real disruption occurs.
That’s why regular testing of business continuity plans is important. It helps businesses find these gaps before they become operational problems. It also gives employees an opportunity to understand their responsibilities and practise how they should respond. Businesses can strengthen their plans by:
- Reviewing them when significant business changes occur
- Testing response procedures through realistic scenarios
- Involving employees who would actually respond during an incident
This process turns continuity planning from a document that sits unused into something the organisation regularly checks and improves.
2. Ignoring Third-Party and Supply Chain Vulnerabilities
A business may have a well-prepared continuity plan, but what happens when an important supplier or service provider cannot support it? This is why ignoring third-party and supply chain vulnerabilities can be a major mistake when preparing for operational disruptions.
Businesses often depend on external providers for cloud systems, software, logistics, raw materials, payment services, and other essential operations. If one of these providers experiences a disruption, the impact can quickly affect the business too.
This means continuity planning cannot stop at the organisation’s own processes. Businesses also need to understand which external dependencies are critical and what could happen if they become unavailable. They can:
- Identify critical suppliers and service providers
- Assess the risks associated with those dependencies
- Review the continuity arrangements of important third parties
- Consider alternatives for critical supplies or services
Professionals with ISO 22301 training in the UK can help businesses take this wider view when developing and improving their continuity arrangements. They understand that business continuity needs to consider the dependencies that could affect critical activities, not just what happens inside the organisation.
This helps businesses identify vulnerabilities earlier and make better-informed decisions about how they can continue operating when an important third party is disrupted.
3. Not Prioritising Critical Business Functions
A disruption can affect several parts of a business at the same time, but that does not mean every activity needs to be restored immediately. In fact, trying to recover everything at once can waste valuable time and resources, especially when some activities are far more important to the business than others.
Some processes may need to continue within hours, while others can remain unavailable for longer without seriously affecting the organisation. Businesses therefore need to understand which activities are essential, what happens when they stop, and how quickly they need to be restored.
A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) can help organisations make these decisions by examining the consequences of disruption to important business activities. Once these priorities are clear, teams can understand:
- Which activities need immediate attention
- Which resources are essential to those activities
- How quickly critical functions need to resume
- Where recovery efforts should be focused first
Professionals with ISO 22301 training can help businesses take this structured approach when identifying and prioritising critical activities. They can help organisations understand the potential impact of disruption and develop continuity arrangements around what the business actually needs to keep running.
Knowing how to prioritise critical business operations allows recovery efforts to focus on the activities that matter most instead of trying to restore everything at the same time.
4. Overlooking Crisis Communication
Knowing how to respond to a disruption is important, but that response can quickly become difficult when people do not know what is happening or what they are expected to do.
Employees need clear instructions, managers need reliable information to coordinate their teams, and customers may also need to know how the disruption affects them. This is why crisis communication needs to be part of business continuity planning rather than something businesses figure out once an incident occurs.
Without clear arrangements, different teams may receive conflicting instructions. Important updates may be delayed due to this. Moreover, employees may waste valuable time trying to determine who they should listen to. But businesses can prevent such problems by deciding in advance:
- Who communicates: Assign clear responsibility for internal and external updates.
- Who needs information: Identify employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders who may need to be contacted.
- How communication happens: Establish the channels that should be used during different types of disruptions.
- What should be communicated: Prepare guidance or templates for the information different audiences may need.
A clear communication approach can help employees understand what is happening and respond to instructions more confidently. It also ensures important stakeholders are always well informed while the business manages the disruption.
5. Neglecting Employee Training and Human Factors
A continuity plan can explain exactly what should happen during a disruption. However, employees still need to understand how those plans apply to their responsibilities. This is where businesses can make another common mistake. They may invest time in developing procedures but give employees little opportunity to understand or practise them.
Imagine an organisation has a clear emergency response procedure, but employees are unsure who they should report to, what systems they should use, or what their responsibilities are. The plan may be well written, but it will not be enough on its own.
Getting the employees trained on them beforehand can help turn documented procedures into actions employees can actually follow. Businesses can strengthen this area by:
- Training employees on their specific continuity responsibilities
- Including continuity training in relevant onboarding programmes
- Conducting drills or exercises to practise response procedures
- Making sure remote and hybrid employees understand how they should respond
The aim is not to make every employee a business continuity specialist. It is to ensure that the people involved in a disruption understand what is expected of them.
A More Structured Approach to Business Continuity
The five mistakes above show why business continuity cannot stop at creating a plan and storing it somewhere for an emergency. Businesses need to understand what could disrupt their operations, what must continue, and how people should respond when normal operations are affected.
This is where ISO 22301 Training provides a structured approach to business continuity management. It helps organisations build, maintain, and continually improve a Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) around their actual operational needs.
A structured approach allows businesses to:
- Identify risks: Understand what could disrupt critical business activities.
- Assess impacts: Determine what could happen if important activities are interrupted.
- Plan responses: Establish appropriate strategies for responding to different disruptions.
- Assign responsibilities: Ensure people know what they need to do during an incident.
- Test and improve: Review whether continuity arrangements work and strengthen them when needed.
Professionals with ISO 22301 training can help organisations put these principles into practice. An ISO 22301 lead implementer training programme can be particularly useful for professionals involved in developing and implementing a BCMS.
Looking to build practical ISO 22301 knowledge? Grow Skills Store offers professional training designed to help you understand business continuity requirements and apply them in your role. Speak to our team to explore the right training option for your goals.