■ Leon Teo

manager of quality management

Sysmex Asia Pacific

Our company is looking at how we can start a business continuity planning (BCP) program because of recent pandemic cases and the possible risks to our healthcare product manufacturing business if it occurs to us. When the H1N1 pandemic struck, our corporate communication department did send out some communication on where not to travel.

We have yet to experience any large-scale pandemic cases, but we have come across some small issues. This is our main concern so we want to look at how we can manage pandemics, natural disasters, fires and other crises. Now would be a good time to start BCP if we want to keep business operations running.

My CEO encouraged me to attend the course [on BCP] because he sees the importance of it and also because we are a multi-national company.

While our global headquarters (HQ) has its own set of global BCP practices, the standards are mainly catered to their domestic side and they realised each of the regional offices do have their own unique situations. As such, HQ feels that every office should have their own risk-management processes, so they have asked the regional managers to look into managing their own risks.

I can’t give an exact timeline of when we would implement a BCP because I need to get a better idea of BCP and relay the information to the senior management before we can plan the route forward. But as I will probably be the BCP project team-leader, cooperation from the staff and top management will be very important to implement a BCP successfully.

■ Josephine Ng

Assistant manager

Zeon Asia

Attending a seminar on BCP is only just a start for our company. We are a trading company serving the Asia markets in the shipping industry and our sales office in Singapore consists of three departments – admin, logistics and accounts. We prepare shipping orders and documents for our clients, who give us businesses that run into millions of dollars. My boss, the managing director, wants me to find out more about how we implement BCP for our office because our business can’t go on if a crisis disrupts our operations. Our clients wouldn’t be able to clear their cargoes if they do not receive our documents in time.

After the H1N1 outbreak, it’s very important for management to know how we can continue [to keep business operations running] when a pandemic strikes our staff. Do we work from home or from other offices? If the employee can’t come to the office and needs to work from home, how is he or she able to prepare and send out documents without the corporate letterhead? The employee would also need a certain software, which is only available on our work computers, to prepare the documents. How do we use our home personal computers to churn out documents?

Though our company is small, we are handling big businesses so an IT disaster planning is something we need to start thinking about.

■ Winnie Wee

Human resources manager

Geodis Wilson supply chain optimisation

I look after about 50 employees and my company’s current BCP consists of giving those who would be able to work from home laptops, in case of a pandemic. There are around 30 employees who require laptops for planning and co-ordination while the rest are ground staff who take care of the moving aspect of logistics.

At the same time, all line managers have a contact list of everyone in the office so we can communicate with the staff wherever they are. We have their handphone and residential numbers so staying in touch with one another during a crisis is not an issue at all. Vice versa, employees have the management and line managers’ contacts so they can reach them in case of emergencies. After H1N1, maybe it seems that things are back to normal, but I believe most companies are very vigilant about the fact that they want everyone to be contactable during such times.

If there is a pandemic or if our office equipment gets damaged during a fire, we would focus our main priority on retrieving the business information in our backup servers and ensuring the necessary people have laptops to keep continue working.

Attending BCP courses may give you guidelines, but I feel it’s more important to get these fundamentals in place first. For now, I don’t feel the need to get accreditation for BCP at the moment.