What are the main benefits of a Business Continuity training/exercise program?
There are two main benefits of exercising your business continuity/disaster recovery plan: (1) to train individuals in the organization and (2) to improve the organization’s ability to respond using the plan. For individuals, exercising enables them to practice their roles and gain experience in those roles. For the organization, exercising improves the company’s ability to manage incidents and emergencies. In both cases, the benefits are derived not just from the exercise but from evaluating the exercise, recognizing problems, and making recommendations to improve the results. Management should be clear that exercises are NOT tests. The intent is not to establish a pass or fail. An exercise should be viewed as the normal work required to refine and to tune business continuity and emergency plans. An exercise has value only when it leads to improvement. Exercises should be conducted periodically, at least be yearly, or, if business is rapidly changing, at least twice a year.
