Business Continuity Awareness - making it stick

It is an unfortunate fact of life that most business continuity awareness training courses are quickly forgotten. Although a formal presentation is good for introducing the overall scope of a subject is quickly forgotten if the participants are not regularly (but gently!) reminded of it. Bearing in mind that that most people in an organisation are not regularly dealing with incident management and business continuity preparations, their knowledge retention of formal courses will inevitably fade over the course of time. Creating and delivering a series of periodic “nudges” can ensure that organisational knowledge is sustained. Some nudges that tend to work well are:

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• Providing a quick reference guide that can be conveniently accessed at the time of need. A quick reference guide formatted for ease of use on mobile devices can ensure that relevant guidance can be accessed when needed. This need not be as sophisticated (or expensive) as a dedicated “app”.

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• Documents customised for storing and viewing on mobile devices can created with standard MS-Office tools and distributed as custom formatted PDF files (which can be read on almost any device) are a straightforward and effective approach to this. These guides will also be updated from time to time, giving the opportunity for a “nudge” when updates are distributed.

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Other nudges in the form of “micro-training” sessions can also keep levels of awareness up. For instance, performing a test of incident notification will remind members of the organisation of the incident notification protocols in place. The content of the test messages can also contain links back to the overall business continuity awareness programme, priding recipients with the opportunity to refresh their know ledge of the wider programme. Posters, pop-ups displayed in prominent positions around the organisation can also provide a nudge to maintain levels of awareness. Using QR codes that allow links to further information are also helpful in providing direction to further information.

 

These are just a few examples of “nudges” that can be used to maintain and preserve business continuity awareness in an organisation. The overall range of nudges is limited only by imagination and the knowledge of what is likely to work in a particular organisation.

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