A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) outlines a range of scenarios that could negatively impact the business and the steps that will be needed to minimise the damage and expedite recovery. We have outlined key elements of a good BCP in this situation that founders can modify and adapt for their businesses:
Preparedness
- Define escalation levels and responses that need to be tailored for each level. For example:
- Code Blue: Business as usual
 
- Code Orange: Lockdown for 3-6 weeks; slow recovery post that
 
- Code Red: Lockdown for 12 weeks; mass scale infections and very slow recovery
 
 
- Create a “Tiger Team” - cross functional team to swiftly take decisions when needed. Typically includes top management but also key influential people in the organisation
 
- Identify “Mission Critical” parts of the business (functions, key customers, products, markets, etc) where disruption needs to be minimized
 
- Equip organisation to work from home / in distributed teams
- IT infrastructure - laptops, dongles, VPN, video conferencing software, collaboration software
 
- Appropriate tools e.g. for call centre employees
 
- Travel arrangements for employees if needed to come to work (no public transport)
 
 
- Create backups and redundancies
- Code base
 
- Important documentation
 
- Accounts
 
- Testing resilience of Disaster Recovery setup
 
 
- Insurance cover: health insurance and loss of income insurance for employees
 
Protection
- Employee health and safety
- Travel advisory
 
- Office sanitisation protocol
 
- Equipping field staff (e.g. delivery boys) with gloves, sanitisers, masks
 
- Proactive health checkups for at risk staff
 
- Chain of notification and quarantine guidelines if employee or family members gets infected
 
 
- Key person risk - physical separation of key management where possible
 
- Data access and security
- Remote infra monitoring and remote IT helpdesk
 
- Backup schedule and processing
 
 
Response
- Mission critical functions
- Daily tracking and reviewing mechanisms
 
- Repurpose team and re-allocate resources if required
 
- Revised incentive structure if required
 
- Clearly articulate what parts of the business you will just not do to limit risk and free up resources e.g. not serve certain locations, customer segments, etc.
 
 
- Customers
- Prioritisation based on importance and risk of churn
 
- Proactive communication plans
 
 
- Vendors
- Identification of highest priority vendors and building redundancies
 
- Payout plan in each escalation level
 
- Proactive communication plans
 
 
- HR
- New hiring - plan in each escalation level and process
 
- Training - process and resources
 
- Appraisals - timing and linkage to cash flow for each escalation level
 
- Retrenchment - scale and communication based on each escalation level
 
 
- Communication and morale
- Full team communication plan by top team
- Frequent - daily, if not weekly
 
- Clear and concise
 
- Focus on positives and celebrate every win
 
 
- Identification of inter-team communication fault lines
 
- Functional / team communication
- Frequent e.g. weekly one-on-ones
 
- Focus on deliverables
 
 
- Weekly happy hours over video or “Water cooler channels on Slack” where employees are encouraged to share and ask questions
 
 
- Financing and cash flow planning in different scenarios