• What makes a plan robust and useful?
• Why do some plans sit on the shelf?
• What commonly goes wrong/ missteps to avoid
• Who should be consulted in preparing BCP’s
• Testing to identify weaknesses – why, how, how often?
• Examples of lessons observed on the Covid response,
• Determining scope – key objectives and goals
• Designating the BC Team – command and control, task-oriented, sub-teams
• Singling out key business areas and critical functions
• Preparing a Business Impact Analytic Report (BIA)
• Determining minimal acceptable downtime for critical functions
• Creating a plan to maintain operations

• Why safeguarding the mental health and wellbeing of employees has become an essential part of business continuity planning
• New dimension of worry for employees as a result of covid
• The “always on” culture
• Impact of the sudden change in our routine and habits
• From anxiety and stress to burnout and depression and increases in LTC leaves
• Adopting people centred processes in times of crisis to mitigate risk
• Processes to mitigate risk
• How to integrate health into an organization’s culture
• Accessing mental health services through the workplace
• Self assessment – Is what you are doing effective?

Long before COVID-19 many organizations conducted virtual incident, emergency and business continuity exercises for planned events and unplanned incidents/emergencies. Since some level of COVD-19 restriction is likely to continue into the near future, this session will:

• Cover a sampling of virtual exercise best practices from across all levels of stakeholders
• Help organizations in various sectors effectively use virtual exercises to validate capabilities and drive continuous improvement
• Help you plan actions to take before, during and after a virtual exercise
• Show you how to run a tabletop exercise virtually, ensuring full engagement, benefits and challenges to conducting a virtual exercise
• Leverage graphics, images and props and evaluation considerations

• Expectation that climate change will have an even larger impact on business than Covid
• Why the COVID-19 crisis portends unforeseen business continuity challenges related to climate change
• Unforeseen consequences of climate change and the rapidly changing risk landscape
• Physical, transitional and liability risk
• Interconnectedness, global and local supply chain issues
• ESG issues including carbon tax, sector stigmatization etc.
• Aligning business continuity and sustainability frameworks
• Including climate risk in risk assessments

Critical event or crisis?  The two are very different.  Severe weather, civil protest, an active shooter or a global pandemic.  Critical events like these become crisis without adequate responses.

The response depends on three things: a full understanding of the event, having the right systems in place and being able to respond fast enough.

This session will explore how organizations are successfully boosting their resilience and averting crisis to manage floods, protect a school during military unrest and keep communities and citizens safe.

• Brief background of the CNSC
• Nuclear Emergency Management in Canada
• The CNSC’s role in Nuclear Emergency Management
• Small case study

Most organizations make Business Impact Analysis (BIA) a cornerstone, or foundation for their business continuity program. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but where did Risk and Threat Assessment (RTA) go? It has been part of the BCM body of knowledge for decades, but some treat it as an afterthought. As we spend probably 95-98% of our time planning and preparing, not responding and recovering, we need to reposition the value of risk assessment. This session will present a simplified methodological approach to making risk assessment the cornerstone of a sound BCM program.