3 Ways to Help Your Business Continuity and ERM Teams Collaborate
- May 02, 2019
What happens when your business continuity teams and your Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) teams aren’t in sync?
Bill Hord, Vice President of Enterprise Risk Management Services for Quantivate, recently joined us on the Continuity Forecast to answer this question. He also shared some insights on how to sync up and optimize collaborative continuity.
You can listen to the podcast now or keep reading to see a little of what Bill had to say.
Business Continuity Teams and Enterprise Risk Management Teams
A lot of problems regarding disconnect between these two groups comes from a lack of communication. Bill’s advice? Get both your business continuity team and your ERM team in a room together and start talking.
When it comes down to it, business continuity and enterprise risk management folks are on the same team. While BC and ERM departments are two separate things, they share a common goal: To prepare the business to reach their objectives and minimize any risks to those objectives.
While Bill was on our podcast, he talked a lot about the benefits when these teams work together. Below are three of the best ways to get BC and ERM teams to collaborate and take advantages of those benefits.
3 Ways to Get on the Same Page
How do you know if your business continuity teams and your enterprise risk management teams aren’t collaborating? There are a bunch of red flags, but Bill says these are the top three ways you can avoid them.
1. Use Common Risk Language
Your entire organization needs to talk about risk the same way. This sounds pretty obvious, but it’s a disconnect that Bill often sees. “It’s very hard to reconcile risk when everybody isn’t using a common risk language” says Bill.
When business continuity teams and enterprise risk management teams communicate or meet, they should all use the same language to help keep one another on the same page. And if you’re in a meeting where a term is unclear, make sure you speak up and ask for clarification. You’ll thank yourself later if the emergency scenario ever takes place.
2. Coordinate Your Reporting & Assessments
Just like with your language, there is no reason your reporting should be disconnected.
Business Impact Assessment and any reports the ERM team is in charge of go hand-in-hand. You’re dealing with a lot of the same risks. “The same folks that are sitting on an ERM committee are more often than not the same folks that are sitting on a business continuity committee.”
3. Build BC Exercises Around Key Risks
If the BC team knows what risks the ERM team thinks are greatest, then they can confirm the priority of those risks and build out plans for mitigating them.
By working together the two teams can ensure a smoother, healthier risk process at their organization.
To listen to the entire podcast, please click the link below and remember: Business never stops!
