| Is ‘incident’ a better term to use rather than ‘emergency’ and ‘crisis’ within BCM?
Although emergency and crisis are well understood and well used words in the business continuity community, there is a wider move towards using the term ‘incident’ across all disciplines. At the recent South Midlands (UK) BCI forum this topic was discussed and the consensus was to support the move. Under such usage we would have incident management, instead of crisis management and incident response rather than emergency response. The term ‘major incident’ is now prevalent amongst the emergency services, and the ITIL service delivery best practice is also based on ‘managing incidents’. The use of the word incident is far more neutral, and non emotional, it is certainly the best word to be used when liaising with the media, and it will give a better message to company staff, customers, and suppliers alike, thus protecting company, and brand reputation. If we were to use ‘incident’ to describe all levels of events within any given organisation, it would simply mean having an agreed escalation process whereby the incidents are classified, and the appropriate levels of incident management informed/engaged. I know from speaking with my peers within the business continuity profession that every company uses its own terms for classifying events and that these terms mean different things to different people. If we use ‘incident’ as the common denominator at least we all start from the same point. The meaning of the word, as described in the BCI Glossary of Business Continuity Management terms, says it all – Any event that may be, or may lead to a business interruption, disruption, and/or loss. The severity of the incident should not mean it is called anything else but an incident, it’s just the level of response, and plans invoked that will change. Within business continuity the terms crisis (an occurrence and/or perception that threatens the operations, staff, shareholder value, stakeholders, brand, reputation, trust, and/or strategic/business goals of an organisation), and emergency (an actual or impending situation that may cause injury, loss of life, destruction of property or cause the interference, loss or disruption of an organisations normal business operations to such an extent it poses a threat) also have valid descriptions in the BCI Glossary, but overlap somewhat from one to the other. In the wider world the terms crisis, and emergency can be perceived by different people to mean different things, and can be self fulfilling terms, and unless used precisely will certainly add to the speculation, and possible misinterpretation surrounding any given event, whereas incident says nothing until it is quantified, and in doing so becomes very precise. In summary the word ‘incident’ appears to have wider recognition, is less emotive, and is well defined and not as open to interpretation as are crisis, and emergency especially outside of the business continuity world. I think the issue warrants further discussion within the Business Continuity Institute, with a view to adopting it as a standard term for describing events.
•Date:
13th May 2004 •Region: UK/Worldwide •Type:
Article •Topic: BC
general |
