A6: Practical Steps to Advance Your Active Shooter Response Exercise Program
David Trout, Raytheon
In this session practical steps will be shared on how Raytheon built its exercise program around this growing threat and advanced it to conducting full scale active shooter exercises at multiple sites safely and securely. It will also demonstrate how leadership support was achieved and buy-in and trust secured from the highest levels to make exercises like these mandatory at every site. It will also include a deep dive into the exercise team’s planning process that has enabled all of the drills to be carried out safely, securely, and used as a template to plan and conduct these complex drills. You will walk away with invaluable knowledge to build on education and training around this topic no matter what level you’re at using real and practical steps that can be easily implemented.
B5: Building Organizational Knowledge – A Unique Way to Empower Enterprises
John Jackson, 4ci Mgmt
Any business that evolves beyond a few people in a single location runs the risk of developing information silos that different departments or people are responsible for. There is not a person or group that knows every process, every asset, every vendor, and every dependency that allows the organization to operate successfully. Organizational Knowledge – not a term commonly associated with Business Continuity, Resilience, or Disaster Recovery, can be a valuable asset to the organization and raise the value of the Business Continuity program in management’s eyes.
C16: Business Continuity Awareness, Increasing Engagement
Robin Loparo, Assurant
Looking for exciting ways to engage your employees including senior leadership and your c-suite? This presenter believes that she may have the solution. In this session she will take you through tools, exercises, and games that she has implemented in her program to increase awareness and employee engagement. Several tools and resources will include how to plan a tabletop exercise that is more than just a scenario, how to educate through games, training, bulletins, and other resources, key components of a PowerPoint presentation, why your tabletops are falling flat, and a closer examination of your training programs.
C17: Why Promoting Business Continuity Positivity is a Corporate Win!
Frankie Blevins, Markel, and Sherri Flynn, RecoveryPlanner
In this session we will share ideas worth integrating into your Business Continuity exercising, training, and awareness programs. These examples and methods leverage the importance of communicating positive results for more corporate awareness, improving BC training, more effective exercises, and organizational resiliency within your workforce. Educating employees at all levels of the organization continues to be a challenge for many. Learn how leading Business Continuity professionals address education and communication to help both the organization and its many constituents appreciate the positive value of Business Continuity.
D7: Hidden Secrets Revealed! By-Products of Table-Top Exercises
Steven Ross, Risk Masters International
Business Continuity Managers often perform tabletop exercises because live simulations are considered too disruptive, expensive, or unsafe. Not often recognized is that tabletop exercises can reveal a great deal more about an enterprise’s readiness than even the organizers expected. This session will provide ideas to get the most out such tests. The value comes from choosing scenarios that challenge the participants’ imaginations and by having the right people participate. In this way, they can be made to see risks they didn’t know they had and strengths they didn’t recognize either. An exercise that rolls out over time, with new obstacles popping up unexpectedly, helps management visualize an actual business disruption. And if it proves that the organization’s Business Continuity Plan does not anticipate certain incidents, both emergency and day-to-day activities can be improved.
E7: A Team of One: Challenges and Advantages
Becky Cohen, BBX Capital
In today’s world, with remote employees, social media, electronic storage of information, and ever-changing business operations, the business continuity environment must adjust while still meeting established standards and that can be challenging, especially in a smaller department or if it’s part of your full-time job or a department of one. As Simon Sinek said, “a boss has the title, a leader has the people” and continuity cannot be successful without a strong, inspirational, inventive leader. Join this session as the presenter shares her trials and successes, as a one-person department with responsibility for more than 8,000 employees and close to 400 different locations.