Disaster Recovery: Write People into the Plot

Business continuity and disaster recovery plans truly work only if they take employee needs into account

By Malcolm Wheatley

July 01, 2005 — CSO — Call center operator MM Teleperformance has plenty of practice dealing with disaster and disaster recovery. In recent times the Bristol, U.K.-based company—part of a French-owned group that operates 179 call centers in 36 countries—dealt with the aftermaths of both September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Ivan, and advised U.K. citizens on travel to the Middle East in the run up to the Iraq invasion of 2003. Retained by the British government to field emergency calls in the event of a disaster, the company is required to have fully briefed agents on standby to field calls from the public within four hours of a service invocation.

But the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami brought disaster closer to home. Although a call center that the company operates in the Gurgaon suburb of Delhi, India, was physically unaffected by the catastrophe, the sheer scale of the devastation forced management to ponder a number of unpalatable what-if scenarios. The center employs a considerable number of people from southern India, for example, and many of them

had taken advantage of the holiday to visit relatives—some residing in the affected regions. Ultimately no MM Teleperformance workers were killed, injured or delayed in their return, but center managers wouldnt know this until much later.

"We recognized that we needed to look again at our disaster recovery plans," says Chief Operating Officer Bibi Bajwa. "It was important to know that we had a workable contingency plan in the event of a full-scale disaster." Long-held nagging doubts about the nearby backup center, for example, have now crystallized—especially given the proximity of both buildings to the Delhi airport. "I dont now think it is sensible to have the two so close together," she says. "When we can, well change it." The disaster recovery plans for the companys two operations in the U.K.s Midlands region, for example, call for core operatives to be quickly bused to an unaffected site, from which a skeleton service would be operated—responding to incoming calls only, for example, rather than making outgoing calls as well.

Bajwa is not alone in contemplating the consequences of disaster with a capital D. Time and again, notes John Medaska, a vice president with IT services vendor Relational Technology Services of Tampa, Fla., supposedly workable contingency plans have foundered in the face of devastation that is widespread rather than localized. The weak spot? The human element.

"With their homes and neighborhoods in ruins or under threat, employees—as youd expect—tend to concentrate on their personal life. But because thats never been considered at the planning stage, companies are surprised when it happens," says Medaska. In the immediate aftermath of 1992s Hurricane Andrew, he adds, employers surveys apparently revealed that up to 70 percent of employees who were working on supposedly mission-critical tasks didnt show up for work. "Their planners put their hands up and said, Gee, we never imagined that people would put their wife and kids before the company," notes Medaska, wryly. And so, minutely detailed business continuity plans might contain a gaping hole, if people arent on hand to carry out those planned actions.

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