The main difference between a contingency plan and a continuity plan is that the former is proactive, and the latter is reactive. In other words, a contingency plan approaches problems even before they occur while a continuity plan is in use after the issues took place. When starting to compose your plan, you have to make sure that it follows the standard document flow.
A contingency plan is a strategy you create for your team or business in the event that something disrupts regular business operations. Think of a contingency plan as the “Plan B” for regular business operations—it’s the plan that you create to keep things running even if something prevents your business from operating normally. You can test the effectiveness of a contingency plan by conducting regular drills, tabletop exercises, and simulations to evaluate how well your team responds to various scenarios. Testing helps identify gaps in the plan, improve response times, and ensure all stakeholders are familiar with their roles in an emergency.
Key Operational KPIs and Metrics to Track in 2025 (+ Template)
It will help you to know what to do in an emergency and other disastrous scenarios. Say some of your employees are based in the Midwest, and a tornado touches down where three of your workers are based. The same might hold true if a hurricane strikes the Florida coast, where your business has a large office. A designated staffer contacts those affected and confirms they’re safe, but they can’t return to their duties until roads are passable, the power outage ends and Internet service is restored. Management then reassigns any critical operations like order fulfillment to other staffers, who have been trained and prepared for these tasks to ensure business continuity. If you base your understanding of contingency plans on the facts and details above, you may conclude that it only covers natural disasters.
Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs
This tool aids businesses in identifying potential risks, allocating resources, using risk probability, and setting a course of action to mitigate or minimize the impacts of unforeseen events. It’s your road map to continuity in the face of unexpected events and hurdles, be it a financial downturn, a tech malfunction, or an operational interruption. This article explores 10 of the best business contingency plan and backup plan templates from ClickUp and Microsoft Word.
Contingency Planning vs. Crisis Management
If you aren’t sure who should be included in your brainstorming session, create a stakeholder analysis map to identify who should be involved. A well-thought-out contingency planning process helps protect your bottom line, reassure your stakeholders, and make sure continuity of operations can resume with minimal disruption. Although their names vary by few letters, business continuity and contingency plans are different concepts. Continuity is the ability of your business to continue functioning after an incident that has disrupted operations occurs.
I work with a team of writers and business and legal professionals to provide you with the best templates. When starting a project or business, most people plan according to the status quo. Unfortunately, that’s a best-case scenario and not helpful in the real world. To do that, your management team needs a clear understanding of the project’s status at all times.
Business continuity plan example + free template
The current situation of the world has shown that many businesses can go through all sorts of situations. However, it doesn’t matter you are a small business, a hospital, or a bank. You should have a strategy to continue your work no matter what happens. Therefore, a business continuity plan template is an important part of your company’s risk management.
- Once you start thinking about it, you’ll realize how many things you rely on to avoid going wrong, even for fundamental processes.
- ClickUp’s Small Business Emergency Action Plan Template supports small enterprises in setting up robust contingency plans.
- When creating a contingency plan, be proactive, thorough, and adaptable.
- If the BIA indicates that it’s a high percentage, the company will most likely want to prioritize creating a contingency plan for this business risk.
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- In other words, a contingency plan approaches problems even before they occur while a continuity plan is in use after the issues took place.
- Create your own with the BCP Template for Transportation to maintain timely deliveries and operations.
That way, if your website gets hacked, it will be easy to restore the data after regaining access and changing passwords. Recognising the value of both is crucial to develop a robust and comprehensive strategy, ensuring that recovery efforts are focused on the outcomes that matter most to your business. For example, you might conduct a BIA to determine the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for key business processes. This establishes the speed at which operations must be restored to avoid severe financial or reputational damage. The core aim of Business Continuity Planning is to ensure that an organisation can continue to deliver its products and services, minimise downtime and recover swiftly when faced with disruption.
- A contingency plan is a large-scale effort, so hold a brainstorming session with relevant stakeholders to identify and discuss potential risks.
- You can begin the contingency planning process by completing a contingency plan template so that you’re adequately prepared.
- An effective contingency plan is based on good research and brainstorming.
- The business contingency plan focuses on how a company copes with the uncertainties at hand.
- When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.
Situational Crisis Communication Theory and How It Helps a Business
This usually means setting up a risk register to track issues and tackle them before they become big problems. When assessing potential risks and scenarios, it’s important not to cut corners or slack. You can rank them by likelihood, but you should by no means leave less likely events out.
Consider what needs to be done in order to resume normal operations after the impact of the event. Keep your data safe and your workloads available with early threat detection, layers of protection and rapid recovery. Discover how IBM Storage Defender can help you protect your information supply chain. Protect your data from evolving threats no matter where it is stored with backup, AI-enabled threat detection and rapid recovery. I received a bachelor of business administration (BBA) degree from London Business School. I have 8+ years of writing experience in the different template fields and working with ExcelTMP.com for 7 years.
Plan Templates
For businesses and some individuals, minimizing the effects or damages becomes a number one priority when uncontrollable forces disrupt business operations and tasks. When problems such as natural disasters and security breaches strike the enterprise, business owners, together with business contingency plan example their team, come up with approaches to amend the situation. In many cases, entrepreneurs look at emergency contingency plans as the action plan for the current predicament.
Follow these seven steps to develop your contingency plan, from creating a policy state and implementing preventive controls to testing and training employees and maintaining your contingency plan. Let’s look at some examples to illustrate better why contingency plans are necessary and how businesses reacted. Using a contingency plan template provides you with a few different benefits. Review your contingency plan frequently to make sure it’s still accurate. Take into account new risks or new opportunities, like new hires or a changing business landscape. If a new executive leader joins the team, make sure to surface the contingency plan for their review as well.