Develop a social media use policy

This is a guidance policy for your employees to follow. Many companies have tried to restrict access to social media at work, and many have failed. If your company doesn’t have strict security reasons that prohibit access, it’s better to come up with reasonable boundaries and to communicate them clearly. Employees will respect you for it and that will be reflected in their communications.

Monitor the social media landscape

If you haven’t done this before, beware—you may be surprised at what you find. The Web is wide open for honest reviews, exaggerated grievances and downright meanness. To protect your company’s reputation and resources, you want to always be one step ahead with correct information and suitable responses if the social conversation reflects badly on your company. The first step lies in looking and listening.

The benefits for business when engaged in the public conversation are vast. The social landscape can reveal the feelings and opinions of your customers and clients. It’s a great way to take the pulse of your brand and can uncover a goldmine of ideas for improvements for your product management team. It can also provide early hints of emerging issues and threats, and will pinpoint exactly where your company’s public message is missing the mark. You can take the information you gain from this to refine or reinforce your corporate message, and even see how your competition is regarded in the cybersphere.

Find out more about social media for BC/DR professional from our new webinar series and brief: Social Media in a Crisis: Friend or Foe?

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• Business recovery coordinator
• Team leaders, customers and alternates
• Facilitator
• Other personnel as determined necessary

Procedures

• Facilitator
  • Be sure that the plan, including exhibits, has been distributed to each participant and has been updated before the exercise
  • Meet with all participants to explain the purpose and scope of the test and explain the sections of the plan to be exercised
  • Describe the disaster scenario (situation) to be used for the exercise backdrop, including:
    • Description of the type of disaster
    • How the situation was reported
    • Time of day and day of month the disaster was reported
    • Extent of damage to the involved site and anticipated period of unavailability
    • Extent of damage to equipment, including time frame for replacement or repair
    • Effect on facilities, surrounding geography, voice and data communications, personnel (i.e., injury or death) and other pertinent information
  • Describe the plan activation criteria and whether the plan is activated under the described circumstances
  • Request the team leader to provide direction to the team customers as they describe their responses and actions to the situation
  • Monitor the various team activities, noting the performance of the team customers to the disaster scenario
  • Provide additional events, clarifications to the situation, and simulate responses from other recovery teams, as appropriate, to keep the simulation active
  • Identify enhancements needed to the plan
  • Assemble the team customers at the completion of the structured walk-through test for a debriefing to discuss general observations, ideas, suggestions and team-specific changes or suggestions relating to the plan
  • Prepare an evaluation of the team’s performance and identify enhancements to the plan and exercise
  • Meet with the team leader to discuss specific suggestions and changes that will enhance the team’s preparedness, the plan and future testing
  • Assign responsibilities for updating the plan; include the date the update is to be completed, based on the team leader’s feedback
  • Maintain a file of update forms to provide evidence that the review and test have been performed
• Team leader and alternate
  • Review the applicable sections of the plan and prepare the team customers for the exercise
  • Direct the team customers through the recovery process as dictated by the simulated disaster situation
  • Note additions, changes and deletions to the plan
  • Provide the plan maintenance form to appropriate personnel to record amendments to the plan
  • Complete the test results worksheet to help the team in documenting the tests and results
  • Return the completed forms to the person responsible for updating the plan or the to the business recovery coordinator by the due date. If no revisions were necessary, the team leader should prepare a brief memo documenting that no plan update was required
  • Prepare the exercise report, which should contain the following information:
• List of participants
  • Date the test was performed
  • Statement that no revisions were noted during the review, if applicable
  • Team manager’s signature
  • Comments, observations and enhancements
• Team customers
  • Review the applicable sections of the plan
  • During the walk-through session, describe the activities to be performed as documented in the plan, noting how the activity will be accomplished; who will specifically perform the task; what resources are required to accomplish the task; the estimate of time required to perform the activity or the duration in which it can be performed; whether the activity can be completed successfully
  • Complete all exhibits and worksheets relevant to the scenarios
  • Participate in the post-exercise debriefing and evaluation
  • Business recovery coordinator
  • Schedule personnel and arrange for facilities to conduct the structured walk-through test
  • Assist in documenting the activities that occur during the exercise and discussions during the debriefing
  • Participate in the post-exercise debriefing and evaluation
  • Maintain a file of update forms to provide evidence that the review and test have been performed
  • Assurance business recovery plan updates are applied and revised plans are distributed according to the distribution register

  Interested in learning more? Download the Definitive Guide to Business Continuity Planning.

Take the example of Fusco Personnel, a job placement firm in New York. The company works with clients and candidates to provide highly qualified personnel at an affordable rate without sacrificing quality. To do this, they must act quickly. When the recruitment staff gets a call from a client stating that they are ready to hire or that they need temporary help, the wheels are set in motion. The recruiters sift through an extensive database of known candidates checking for necessary education levels, training, experience, competencies and availability.

Sometimes, as in the case of nursing staff or customer service representatives, a client may need to fill many positions quickly. Before adopting automated notification, recruiters would start dialing each of those candidates, providing details to those they could reach by phone and leaving voicemail for those they couldn’t. A flurry of return calls would then ensue, with recruiters both calling and answering calls, sometimes for hours. Often highly qualified candidates were away from their phones for a day or two and would end up missing out on great opportunities.

With automated notification, when recruiters get a call that a client needs a qualified candidate, they quickly send an automated message to any number of applicants in their database, whether 30 or 300, at once. And this takes place without stopping recruiters from doing other important tasks. You can read more about how Fusco Personnel benefits from this non-emergency in this recent article by San Diego Business Journal, or download the case study. Find out how one company can use notification at every level with our fun new video!