Welcome to Business Continuity Awareness Week

So, what is Business Continuity Awareness Week (BCAW) and why is EEAST involved?

BCAW is the annual Business Continuity Institute (BCI) campaign that promotes awareness of business continuity and resilience.

The campaign is designed for both professionals and organisations that are looking to embed or raise awareness of business continuity and resilience amongst their staff and employees. The campaign also offers engagement opportunities via its webinars and annual competitions.

The Theme this year is Building Resilience in the Hybrid World.

In the last 24 months, there has been an increase in the adoption of hybrid work models, wholesale, across many organisations. EEAST is in a slightly different position as we are a mobile and patient facing organisation, but there are may parts of our team which has had to adapt to working, predominantly, from home.

Over the last 24 months, since the start of the global pandemic, all businesses have had to adapt and change the way they deliver their services. EEAST is no different and you will all be aware of the many changes we have all gone through whilst continuing to deliver care to our patients. The effort by all of you cannot be underestimated and I know this is very much recognised by all our senior leaders.

Now is the time to start to reflect and review how we can improve our business continuity systems and processes in order to ensure that any further disruptions to our business can be quickly and efficiently brought under control and that we can recover in an efficient and effective way.

Business continuity is the organisation’s ability to maintain essential functions during and after a disaster/disruption has occurred and to recover from the event with as little down time as possible. The disruptive or disaster event could be anything from a loss of water supply to a building right through to the loss of our Ambulance Control Room (AOC) functions.

In September 2021, the Trust took the decision to take business continuity within the Trust “back to basics”. This means we have been taking a completely different approach to how we undertake business continuity planning across the organisation.

The first step in this approach was to review all business continuity plans across the organisation and to update them whilst including all the learning obtained throughout the Trust response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all those who have been involved in this work for their engagement and commitment to the process.

Over the next week there will be an article published each day which will describe more about the “back to basics” approach, what the Trust is focusing on and also what the wider world is doing to improve business continuity and resilience.

If you would like more information on Business Continuity within EEAST please contact the BC and EPRR Compliance Manager – Darya Wotherspoon at EEAST.BC@eastamb.nhs.uk.

Have a great week.

Published 16th May 2022