Once the BCP team has carried out the design phase, the BCP document should be submitted to the organization’s senior management, including the chief executive officer (CEO), chairman, and board of Directors, for approval (unless senior management was involved throughout the development stages of the plan). The BCP team should provide a detailed description of the plan’s purpose and specific provisions.
Once the BCP has met approval by senior management, the BCP team can start to put the plan into action. An implementation schedule should be developed that utilizes the resources committed to the program to accomplish the established process and provision objectives in as prompt a manner as possible given the scope of the modifications and the organizational climate.
After all of the resources are fully appropriated, the BCP team should monitor the process of an appropriate BCP maintenance program to verify the plan remains responsive to evolving business needs.
Training and education are vital to the implementation of the BCP. All personnel who will actively participate in the plan should receive training on the overall plan and their individual roles and responsibilities. In addition, everyone in the organization will be part of a plan overview briefing.
Those members who are assigned specific BCP responsibilities should be trained and evaluated on their BCP tasks to measure efficiency and ensure they are able to complete tasks when disaster strikes. In the event of unexpected situations, at least one backup person should be trained for every BCP task to ensure redundancy should the person assigned the task cannot reach the workplace during an emergency.
