The human resource and business continuity management
There seems to be an inevitable trend of business continuity becoming more structured – more technology dependent, more regimented, more compartmentalised. When talking about ‘people’, BS25999 uses terms like ‘defined responsibilities’, ‘accountability’, ‘authorities’ and ‘competencies’. My concern is that we are forgetting the unpredictable human element of a response to any incident, and starting to think of people as just another resource or dependency. This kind of detached planning – planning in a vacuum – misses a fundamental point: people are highly complex composites, with multi faceted and malleable personalities that have the potential to change over time in response to new experiences and external pressures. As business continuity professionals we are expected to keep a cool head in a crisis, and train others to do the same. The reasons behind this are summed up in the Kipling poem ‘If’: However well you know yourself – or you think you know yourself – can you predict exactly how you’ll respond to a particular situation? The answer is no – you can use all the information you have about yourself, and look at similar experiences and predict a reaction, but you cannot know for sure. This can be extrapolated to say that no two people are likely to react to the same incident in exactly the same way or that no one person will have the same reaction to two different incidents. Now think about how much you actually know about your work colleagues – the people you are expected to recover the business with. If you were asked to describe them, you’d probably start with the physical characteristics – sex, height, hair colour etc. But what does this actually tell us? At work, most of us project an image of normality to fit in to socially accepted norms. In many workplace environments this is reinforced by policies such as dress codes. When you populate your recovery teams, it is inevitable – and makes good business sense – that you use criteria such as: - Competence or knowledge More minor elements that can be considered also include: If we step back, and look at what makes our work colleagues the people that we ‘know’, then the Donald Rumsfeld quote starts to make sense: “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.” So, what makes us who we are? What are the building blocks of identity? How are they relevant in responding to an incident? The following list is far from exhaustive, and it is inevitable that the importance of each component will vary from individual to individual, and within each individual in response to a multitude of factors. What we can say is that these all overlap to create an individual’s identity that changes over time, with experience and knowledge. There is a question of how much we create our own identity and how much we inherit or that is shaped by our environment. - Personal experience. If an individual has experienced a similar event before – and that may be the event itself or the outcome – then that may trigger a complex reaction. - Family. For many people the family unit is more important than work. If an event affects a wider area (e.g. chemical leak), you have to consider the possibility that for some people, their immediate response will be to gather their family around them, especially if they have young children. - Education. There is an argument that a higher level of education makes an individual better equipped to respond to an incident. There is also an argument that a lot of graduates have no common sense, and people who went straight into work are far more resourceful! - Work history. This can both be the previous employers that an individual has had (especially if they include the military), but also their attitude to their current employer. - Sex. The influence of this isn’t as clear an issue as it has been, and this is reflected in the use of the term ‘gender’ (socially constructed) rather than ‘sex’ (biologically determined). It is further complicated by the ability to alter outward appearances surgically, or to delay some of the issues traditionally associated with aging. - Appearance. There are some elements of our appearance that we have control over e.g. clothes or hairstyle, and some that we don’t e.g. skin colour. How an individual looks will affect how others perceive and react to them, which can in turn reinforce the importance of certain elements of their personality. - Religion and cultural beliefs. There are huge numbers of strands of religion, each one with their own particular nuances. The importance of religion often changes in times of adversity – people may become more religious in the short term, or they might find that in the longer time they have a crisis of faith. - Political inclination. This is perhaps less about party politics and more about personal moral codes. A good example is how individuals consider their response to crime – should criminals be rehabilitated or punished? Is an ‘eye for an eye’ a reasonable or civilised response? - Peer group. For some people it is important how they are perceived by everyone else. The desire to ‘fit in’ can be a strong component of personality, and this can be reinforced following a significant incident, especially in response to external pressures e.g. the media. - Media and external assumptions. Media and external assumptions are interesting and interlinked elements. We live in a 24 hour news culture, and this means we get to see a lot more supposition and conjecture than we ever used to. Coverage of the New York, Madrid and London bombings tended to treat residents of those cities as a whole. This final component leads us on to how the identity of an individual can be subsumed or overtaken by the creation of a group identity. A group identity can be the result of an incident bringing people together through shared experience, or can be an external perception, e.g. through media coverage. As an example, coverage of the London bombings made much of the resilience of Londoners and their collective ‘spirit’. Meanwhile, in London there were examples of backlash from groups against anyone who wasn’t like ‘us’ and was like ‘them’ i.e. the terrorists. Whilst this was generally meant attacks on mosques, there were instances of Sikhs and Hindus being attacked. Organizations need to be aware of the fact that the criteria they use for measuring business disruption aren’t necessarily relevant when considering impacts on the human element of their plans. There is the concept of the ripple effect – although your organization may not be directly affected by an incident, your staff may know people who are, they may feel that it could be have been them on a different day – there are numerous cases of people being affected by an incident as the result of ‘bad luck’, e.g. missing their normal train and getting a later one. If your organization has been directly affected then you should consider different responses from: - Those who should have been on-site at the time of the disaster but weren’t (for whatever reason); - Those who are uninjured or slightly injured (especially if they were in the vicinity of people who were severely injured or killed); - Those who don’t respond as they anticipated they would (this can include both acts of heroism, and people shamed by their inactions); - Those who were on holiday, or off sick at the time (especially if anyone who has been injured is filling in for them); - Who we are is not a fixed state. It is a complex mix of elements that changes over time and in response to environment. - The image that we project is not necessarily a complete representation of who we are. - It is hard to predict how individuals will respond to an incident. You have to accept that there are ‘unknown unknowns’ about staff. - Whilst exercising is useful, you cannot test staff to destruction. HR departments tend to frown on it!! - When factoring in support for people, need to consider the wider family unit as this is one of the most import support networks. - Individuals will go through phases in reaction to an incident e.g. anger, denial and depression, which will all require different treatment. They will often exclude those who “can’t understand” – and this may have an impact on partners and family. Hodgkinson and Stewart (1) describe the powerful effects of such losses and linked emotions: Above all, in psychological terms, they lose faith - not religious faith, but faith in the fact that life has a certain consistency and meaning. The fabric of everyday existence is torn away to reveal danger and risk. For the survivor, the encounter inevitably involves a corruption of innocence. Once something of this nature has happened to a person, it is very difficult for them to believe that life can ever be the same again; that they can let their children walk across the street; or that they can safely go to bed at night. It is also difficult for them to avoid thinking not only that something else terrible might happen, but that in some way they have been singled out, or even that ‘if such a terrible thing can have happened to me then I must have done something to deserve it. Author: Mike Jacobs – director – Biscon Planning www.biscon.co.uk This article is based on a talk originally given at the ICM southern region client lunch, part of a series of events designed to provide bite size information on the latest trends and hot topics in the business continuity industry. By encouraging informed debate and deliberation, clients were able to share knowledge and experience making the event a valuable business and networking opportunity. (1) Hodgkinson P & Stewart M (1998) Coping with Catastrophe: A Handbook of Post-Disaster Psychosocial Aftercare, Routledge London.
•Date: 20th October 2009• Region: UK/World •Type: Article •Topic: BC general |
