Roberta Witty

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Roberta J. Witty
Research VP
11 years at Gartner
33 years IT industry

Roberta Witty is a research VP in Gartner Research, where she is part of the Compliance, Risk and Leadership group. Her primary area of focus is business continuity management and disaster recovery. Ms. Witty is the role specialty lead for… Read Full Bio

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Personal Preparedness – What Are You Doing to Prepare Your Workforce?

by Roberta J. Witty  |  March 4, 2009  |  Comments Off

Every enterprise BCM program is dependent on its workforce to be part of its recovery efforts.  No workforce, no recovery.  But is your workforce prepared to come to the enterprise’s rescue when they themselves are impacted by the event?  You can’t demand that workers be there for you, but you can prepare them to be better enabled – mentally and emotionally - to respond. 

At the NEDRIX Winter Conference March 3, 2009 in Boston, MA, I listened to a presentation of a book that will make the job much easier for you - ”YOUR LIFE, Interrupted”  (ISBN 142513792X Publisher: Trafford Publishing, 2008) by Elizabeth Owen.  Not only are there multiple events covered – 46 to be exact, and 14 action plans to complete, but Ms. Owen provides a 12-month calendar to maintain your personal preparedness plan (or to develop one).

Some sound, pragmatic advice was provided by Ms. Owen.  For example, when submitting a claim to your insurance company after you have incurred property damage, you need to prove the condition of those assets prior to the damage.  But, if you haven’t quite gotten around to taking pictures of your most-treasured possessions, or day-to-day living resources such as your sofa, kitchen appliances and so forth when they are in good condition, contact your friends and family members to request pictures they might have taken that show the assets in their pre-damaged condition.  Submit those pictures to your insurance company.

There are a number of free sources of advice on personal preparedness, including these web sites – not at the detailed level as the book, but good starter sites.

What resources are you using to help craft your enterprise workforce continuity program?

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