People matter as much as tech, was a theme of the latest annual Business Continuity Institute (BCI) survey and report on crisis communication, launched this morning.
In a foreword to the report, BCI chair Christopher Horne recalled that the year 2020 and covid pandemic lockdowns drove an increase in the purchasing and use of specialist emergency and crisis management systems; at the same time as workers became familiar with tools such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom for communication. He wrote: “Indeed, the fear driven by a new pandemic saw management looking to understand every nuance of the illness and how their own organisation was being impacted. Emergency communications plans were activated on a scale never before seen in this report with five minutes – rather than 60 minutes – becoming the gold standard for activation.
Last year, the subject of the survey – involving BCI members in 65 countries – brought a more settled picture, Horne added. “Adoption of emergency communications solutions has continued to increase, but purchasers are being more discerning about the products they introduce into their organisations. While the primary purpose of emergency and crisis communications has remained the same – the ability to contact a large number of people quickly – users are now requiring far more of their tools.
“The means to collaborate, risk management features, information corroboration and reporting are just some of the desirable features of post-pandemic communications systems. However, with all the focus on technology, it is important to remember the importance of people during an incident. The technology within an organisation might be perfect, but training and exercising – which many organisations temporarily paused during the pandemic – now needs to be reintroduced and rejuvenated to apply the changes made during the past two years. Management is also keen to trade in fast activation speeds for more accurate information gathering and corroborating in the early part of the crisis.”
Survey in brief
Widespread use of enterprise communication software (such as Teams) has prompted investment in dedicated emergency and crisis communication tools, the survey found. A majority, 64.3 per cent of crisis teams use enterprise software (such as Teams) to communicate in a crisis; almost the same number (63.5pc) are using specialist tools and software to communicate. This convergence of the two most commonly used tools is symptomatic of the demand now placed on those emergency and crisis communication tools. Collaboration features, risk management features, information corroboration features are all now highly desired features, many of which can only be accessed with more specialist tools.
Top management are now more sympathetic to the organisational need for a good emergency/crisis communications solution, but there are serious holes in strategies: the pandemic has proved to management the necessity of having a good emergency communications strategy, with a sharp increase in the number of small organisations employing specialist tools. However, some are writing emergency communications plans without considering an over-reliance on one platform (such as Microsoft), not considering that all calls are routed through voice-over-IP (VoIP) which could be lost in a communications blackout and not ensuring employee contact information is kept up to date (with HR).
Human failure remains the most common cause for overall failure of an emergency communications plan activation. Mobile ‘phones have become the preferred device to use in an emergency situation for the first time.
More in the April print edition of Professional Security magazine. You can access the report through the BCI website, by registering; you don’t have to be a BCI member.
