It is important to frequently assess your own Business Continuity strengths and weaknesses. The FSA have developed a self assessment tool for the financial markets which firms can use to identify areas of relative strength and weakness in their own business continuity and incident management arrangements. It is a reduced version of the full FSA Benchmarking questionnaire deployed in 2005 and is referred to as "FSA Benchmarking Lite".

The Lite assessment tool is split into individual surveys grouped around General Capabilities and Critical Financial Functions. The General Capabilities survey covers areas of business continuity management which are common to all firms (e.g. crisis/incident management, facilities, people etc.) whilst the Critical Financial Functions surveys focus on the activities considered to be the most critical to a firm as well as the financial markets overall.

Participants in the FSA Benchmarking Lite will receive detailed, confidential feedback on how their continuity and recovery capability compares to other (anonymised) participants and how they measure up to good practice standards. This is in the form of a range of benchmarking graphs showing the firm's performance relative to the benchmark and relative to other participants, together with individual improvement reports showing their scores for all the questions they answered, and indicating how they might improve on areas of relative weakness.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you carry out this assessment. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Within the Financial Sector, most Corporate Strategies tend to be emergent due to the changing dynamics of the markets in which they operate. Therefore a Corporate Strategy will tend to be documented at a high level and to most staff could be perceived as aspirational rather than something more tangible and relevant to their day-to-day activities.

Staff may appreciate the high level direction but will not be able to relate to this within the context of their role or the role of their department. This provides a significant risk to the organisation in the implementation of the corporate strategy.

Corporate Strategy Mapping is about extracting at key levels throughout an organisation the key drivers and dependencies at that level and presenting this in a simple consolidated form for validation and subsequent communication.

Providing a more detailed understanding of the key drivers and dependencies in support of the strategy implementation will provide significant strategic and operational benefits ie

• The ability for all staff to understand how the strategy relates to them and their department
• The opportunity for increased departmental teamwork on the now tangible goals at the middle and lower levels
• The opportunity to validate and monitor at a more detailed level the implementation of the strategy throughout the organisation
• Increased staff engagement through improved communication

Within the context of the resilience of your business it provides you with the opportunity to invest in the improvement of your resilience in a more strategic way and should also provide you with the opportunity for increased operational performance

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you carry out this mapping exercise. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

The resilience of your business depends upon not only your own capabilities but also that of your suppliers and the market as a whole. When you better understand the capabilities of your suppliers you can then better prepare for the overall resilience of your business.

In some firms, having a centralised understanding of this will be a challenge as the relationships and detailed understanding of the external services will be spread across the organization. In some cases multiple parts of the business may have separate relationships with the same supplier. It is only in recent years that Procurement departments have managed to get a handle on this from a purchasing perspective.

From a resilience perspective you need to understand centrally your external dependencies because during a major disruption you may need to make choices and take priority decisions based upon a broad understanding of the internal and external ability to deliver.

Creating a central external dependency map will therefore provide you with the ability to better understand the owners of the relationships, the contingency plans in place by the key suppliers and ensure clarity in the communication links. It also provides you with the opportunity to test the external contingency and therefore ultimately improves your overall resilience to disruption.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you carry out this mapping exercise. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Investing in Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity has always been a difficult and subjective area for any business. A business needs to assess the potential risks and mitigate according to the risk appetite of that business ie balancing Risk Vs Investment.

Clearly the ultimate may be viewed as being completely replicated infrastructure (eg Property and Technology) which is on stand-by in case of disruption to a business. Whilst this may sound desirable, it doesn't actually mitigate effectively all of the resilience risks and is not something that the bottom line will allow most businesses to invest in anyway.

Effective resilience needs to be integral to the day-to-day operation which in turn needs to be driven from the Corporate Strategy to ensure that it is appropriately aligned and is core to all business activities. A Resilience Strategy should therefore be developed to provide a key reference point for all aspects of your business - this will provide the following key benefits:

• Central point for driving your investment Programmes in the overall Resilience of your infrastructure including Property and Technology
• Ensure Senior Management and staff buy-in to the investment and priority of resilience
• Provide the opportunity for a cultural shift within the business to embrace resilience as part of each staff member's daily life

When developing the resilience strategy it is important to challenge the agreements in terms of risk V investment so that this discussion does not occur at lower levels creating delays in decision making and potentially increasing the cost of implementation. This should also be repeated when the Corporate Strategy changes.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you develop a resilience strategy. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

The provision of appropriate working space for businesses has been increasingly challenging for those responsible for this in each business.

Demands on the property portfolio tend to be reactive rather than strategic. The cost of office space has been rising in recent years and the availability of appropriate space is becoming less. Consequently there is growing emphasis on a business to be more strategic in it's demands on real estate so that cost effective and operationally effective solutions can be delivered. There is always a long lead time and long term commitment required so that strategically driven decisions needs to provide the foundation for your portfolio.

Putting a Property Strategy in place for the medium and longer term will benefit your business significantly. A Property Strategy should be driven by the Corporate Strategy and assuming that the Corporate Strategy is mapped to a reasonable level of detail, this will help you make some appropriate strategic space decisions for the medium and longer term. With the core strategy in place you can then deal more effectively with the short term demands and changes deploying more effective space solutions but building upon your more strategic space solution(s).

As part of your overall space solution you may also like to consider Virtual Working which is discussed in more detail in another section. This provides you with a lot of opportunity to provide more scalable working areas through shared desks.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you develop a property strategy. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Throughout the Financial sector there has been measurable progress in recent years around improving the continuity of the financial markets.

A number of the larger financial firms have been involved in activities such as FSA Benchmarking, the Market Wide Exercise, Emergency Services exercises, interest forums, market briefings and working groups. All of these activities have provided a platform for not only addressing the market wide challenges but also helping firms at the individual level as well.

Not all firms can afford to provide resource to participate in these activities and/or have limited resources to progress the resilience of their business.

We can provide to you on a part-time basis an interim leader with significant experience in business resilience within the financial sector. This resilience leader would be integral to your management team but would provide the leadership on all aspects of the resilience of your business. The management and ownership would still remain with your current business managers but the resilience knowledge and leadership could be resourced this way. You may also like to consider engaging this resource on an ongoing basis (part-time) to ensure ongoing progress and maintenance of all your resilience initiatives.

Key benefits of this approach would be:

• A very cost effective solution in addressing an essential aspect of your business.
• Resilience knowledge will be current through the on-going engagement of the resilience leader in a number of market wide activities.
• Extensive senior operational experience ensures appropriate leadership foundation.
• Option of ongoing relationship will ensure consistency and stake in overall progress in your business.
• Valuable resource adding depth to your management team during any potential business disruption.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you with resilience leadership. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Business Continuity planning is a critical component to the overall resilience of your business.

Some years ago the focus was on Disaster Recovery ie just covering a scenario where there was a significant building loss but the high risks to a business are the short-term interruptions through power failure, loss of water supply, cordons etc This has caused businesses to re-focus at the level of business continuity so that the business can be more resilient to these types of interruptions.

There are a number of aspects to business continuity and summarised below are a number of key components that need to be addressed so that an effective foundation for the continuity of your business can be put in place:

• Telephone Call Trees
• Business Impact Analysis
• Business Continuity Plans
• Appropriate Technology infrastructure/solutions based upon the business plans
• Considered alternate space solutions for critical staff aka "Work Area Recovery"
• Staff Awareness of plans, processes and roles and responsibilities
• External communication facilities for staff and help lines for friends and family
• Testing, Familiarisation and maintenance of all of the above
• Continued improvement

Clearly the investment in the Technology and Property infrastructure needs to be challenged in terms of Risk Vs Investment and ideally this will be driven by an overall Resilience Strategy so that it is positioned appropriately for your business. Additionally, Business Continuity needs to be owned by everyone within the business to be effective ie it should be considered as part of the day-to-day responsibilities of all staff.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you progress your business continuity planning. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

The resilience of your business depends upon not only your own capabilities but also that of your key suppliers.

We can work with you to understand the resilience of all of your key suppliers. Where the supplier's have sound plans in place it would be prudent to carry out some form of validation/testing with them (or perhaps through exercises such as the Market Wide Exercise). Where you are uncomfortable with a supplier's plans and preparation you may choose to seek a contingency option. This information should also be a key consideration in future supplier appointments.

For the major cross-market suppliers there are a number of general briefings and information that we can tap into to ensure that this process is not over-engineered so that you can quickly identify any weaknesses and give appropriate consideration to this sooner rather than later.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you understand the resilience of your key suppliers. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Virtual Working is the ability for your staff to operate effectively outside of your office. In most cases it is referring to working from home but it could be applied to any effective working space outside of your main office space.

Clearly it would not suit all functions and roles within your organisation but there are potentially a wide ranging set of roles where it can be very effective. You should also consider that Virtual Working can be applied to a varied number of days ie it is not necessarily about 5 days a week but more realistically about 2 to 3 days per week.

Virtual working is fast becoming a key component of corporate strategy for a number of positive reasons as follows:

Increased Productivity
Virtual Working improves productivity by reducing travel time and increasing the time spent on more valuable activities. It helps rationalise office space and costs, but most importantly with the correct tools provided, it will promote better knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Business Continuity
Virtual Working will allow you to increase the resilience of your operation through a more distributed working model but not compromising on the need to act and operate as one team.

Staff Retention
The ability to work more flexibly to balance home and work commitments can be a priority for some staff and therefore this option can have a very positive impact on retention. This also forces the management culture to focus on deliverables and empowerment rather than measuring productivity through the "hours spent at a desk".

Cost Avoidance
Property prices in recent years have increased significantly and therefore smarter use of existing space is becoming increasingly important to the bottom line. Operating a shared-desk policy for some parts of your business will provide the opportunity for avoiding costs and also reducing costs over time.

Sustainability
With increased awareness and aspirations to minimise carbon emissions, Virtual Working plays a very positive role in reducing carbon emissions through reduced commuting to the office.

Employer Image
Deploying Virtual Working is seen as a very positive action through the flexibility and empowerment inferred and therefore has a very positive on the image of the company.

To implement an effective Virtual Working solution you will need to consider a number of critical aspects to ensure that it becomes a successful component of your overall infrastructure. Key considerations are: Technology (including security), Health & Safety, Shared Desks, Legal, Compliance, Insurance, Team working dynamics and tools, Virtual Working tools and Education (including the cultural changes). Clearly this initiative needs to be led from a sound Business case.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you progress virtual working for your business. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Every business needs to consider the possibility of denial of access to any of their building(s). This could obviously be caused by a wide ranging set of reasons from localised fire and flooding through to terrorist activity etc Clearly the denial of access may be temporary but loss of access for several hours may be very costly to your business.

Considering alternate ways of continuing your operation is therefore essential and there is no single solution to this challenge. You should consider a number of layers within your solution but at the core of this will be alternate space within your current network of buildings or through dedicated & shared vendor space.

If you utilise other buildings you will need to put in place seating plans and technology that supports this and also ensure that staff are aware and to also test this regularly. Maintaining a plan for this will also be key as the dynamics of your business will change ie people in specific roles, staff numbers, organisation etc

If you do not have access to alternate space within your current operation (and we would recommend that there is a "reasonable" distance between buildings to mitigate the geographic risks) then you should consider vendor work area recovery space. Through a combination of dedicated and shared desks you can provide an effective solution to this risk with the additional opportunity of vendor sourced services that make this more integral to your current operation. We would also recommend regular site familiarisation by the elected staff as well as regular testing of the facilities.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you progress a suitable work area recovery solution for your business. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Incident Management is your response to any potential or actual internal/external threats to your business.

Clearly the disciplines and composition of this team mean that it may not be your most senior team by default but a carefully selected team that can provide effective decision making on behalf of the whole of your business in that geographic location.

During a potential or actual incident this team would meet to make informed and balanced decisions on behalf of your business for a wide ranging set of issues from internal infrastructure issues (to ensure awareness and support) through to terrorist threats which are in close proximity to your business.

This team should be driven by the following key values:

• People Your employees are your number one priority and you need to consider the Health and Safety of your employees as the priority
• Clients You have a responsibility to your clients to keep them informed of any actions that you may need to take
• Assets You have a responsibility to your shareholders to protect all of your assets from the fixed assets to the information held
• Communication You need to keep staff, business partners, suppliers and regulator(s) informed at the appropriate times

You need to prepare your Incident Management team (aka Crisis Management) to follow a framework process that is driven by these values and to test this regularly. Having a well practiced Incident Management process that is recognised by your most senior management and staff is essential for the resilience of your business.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you develop and implement a suitable Incident Management process for your business. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Ensuring that staff are fully aware of the resilience infrastructure, plans and communication mechanisms are obviously very important to ensure that your investment is effective.

We can help you develop a staff communication programme on these aspects of your business through poster campaigns, lunchtime briefings, desk drop material as well as reference cards which can easily be carried by each member of staff. This would be tailored to your specific requirements and would be integrated into your ongoing staff communication programme.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you with your resilience awareness. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Business Continuity is a critical component to the overall resilience of your business and the regular testing of this is essential to confirm the current capability as well as highlight opportunities to improve.

Testing should embrace all aspects of your business continuity and therefore should include the following as a minimum:

• Telephone Call Trees - Regular call tree testing by all staff
• Business Impact Analysis - Regular scenario walk thru and challenge
• Business Continuity Plans - Regular dry run challenge as well as technology testing
• Appropriate Technology solutions based upon business plans - Regular Technology testing and where possible full invocation of alternate technology infrastructure should be carried out
• Considered alternate space solutions for critical staff aka "Work Area Recovery" - this should also be tested with the identified critical staff that would occupy these facilities (and include deputies)
• External communication facilities - Regular testing of these

We can provide you with support to co-ordinate the testing of all of the above and to help you identify opportunities to make improvements on the existing capability.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you with your business continuity testing. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Having an Incident Management process is critical for your business and it is also absolutely essential to test and practice this on a regular basis.

The roles of individuals and the dynamics of an Incident Management meeting are very different from the normal management roles that the team will be fulfilling and therefore they need to become familiar with this. As this will always be a framework process then the underlying processes and detail will be refined through this process.

We can assist you in the preparation and delivery of Incident Management training/testing. This is also a good way to engage your senior managers if you currently have little or no plans in place or there is a lack of ownership. The role play required during these sessions will emphasise the importance and potential impact of the scenarios you undertake.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you with your Incident Management training. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

Some aspects of the Financial Markets have made significant progress in recent years on Business Continuity both at the individual firm level and at the market level. A significant contributor to this progress has been down to the partnership approach being adopted by individual firms and the market as a whole.

Several years ago Business Continuity was seen as a potentially competitive area and was rarely discussed outside of an individual firm. More recently though, there has been a very productive dialogue so that the business segment as a whole can progress resilience at that level. If the business segment in which you operate is not resilient as a whole then during a major disruption you may find you have no business irrespective of the health of your own firm ! A key facilitator in this progress has been interest forums where peer institutions share ideas and develop best practice within their business segment.

We have experience in the running of interest forums on Business Continuity and would be happy to talk you through how this could be established for your business segment. We are also in touch with a number of the Trade Associations and have recently helped one of these establish an interest forum for a section of their members with a similar business profile.

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you progress a suitable interest forum for your business segment. Call us now on 0207 898 0590 or email info@resilience-one.com.

A key component in the resilience of your business will be the operational effectiveness of your staff. On a number of occasions we have used executive coaching for our staff which has delivered a number of significant benefits.

For the past 7 years we have used the services of Peter Jenkin Morgan who is an occupational and mentoring psychologist delivering executive coaching, mentoring and counseling. We would thoroughly recommend Peter’s services and he can be contacted via the following link www.wapping.eu