When Your Business Emergency Plan Meets Reality
September 16, 2025

When Your Business Emergency Plan Meets Reality

Military and Law enforcement personnel train extensively, so when they implement plans, they have developed ‘muscle memory’ to supersede their natural hesitation to overthink certain situations, which could lead to a loss of life. The training consists of plan development, implementation, and adaptability, all of which are supported and mastered through extensive training.

This is because in reality, plans can limit the scope of response when the scope is limited. The following are three real-life experiences I have had with various companies from which you can draw valuable lessons.

 

Emergency Communication

The response was escalating, and the mass notification system was deployed to bring the appropriate response teams into the incident management call and also to notify all staff at the site to either leave or work from home. As the flood waters continued to rise, it was discovered that hundreds of personnel remained at the site or had attempted to drive to work that day. Though the staff commuting in had been unable to continue once they reached various flooded roads, the company had to deploy boats to evacuate those who remained on site.

In reviewing why staff had not listened to the warning and instructions sent out, it was discovered that less than 25% of personnel had their personal contact information in the system. Due to the system not having personal cell and home phone numbers, there was no way to communicate with them. Additionally, the work email was not always accessible or considered emergency communications.

Upon reviewing the problem, the company had requested. Still, it did not require personnel to submit their personal contact information, and some staff members thought that if they did provide it, management would call them while they were not at work.  It was also discovered that the company, when testing the system, used work emails as an acceptable method for responses, not understanding that, in an emergency, work emails may not be accessible.

With some policy changes and testing, the company was able to increase the communication rate from less than 25% to over 80%.

 

Exercising for the real world

The annual recovery exercise was scheduled for the weekend, so IT teams had pushed Virtual Machine(VM) images to the recovery data center in preparation for the exercise. The exercise launched and appeared that the VMs recovered within the Recovery Time Objective (RTO). However, a week later, the testing team held an unscheduled functional recovery exercise where the IT team could not push VM images prior, resulting in their inability to recover any VMs at the recovery data center.

Had this been a real event, the company would have been unable to recover from it. In the lessons learned and after-action meetings, it was discovered that pushing VM images would require additional storage, which would increase the costs for a potential event leadership thought would never happen.

The company was forced to rethink its planning, exercise expectations, and rules of engagement. Recovery exercises would no longer allow any pre-event work, except for that which was required to avoid a production impact and had to be approved before the exercise. The policy was also modified to ensure that the replication of necessary data is available at all times within the data centers.

So, ask yourself, are you practicing for the test or preparing to recover?

 

Who’s going to be available?

During the annual town hall at the Southern Production Facility, the CEO reviewed the business continuity plan and expectations with the 2300 attendees. “So, in the event of a hurricane, you are expected to work from the Midwest Production Facility. Is this understood? Great, and now our BC Manager will go further into the annual training and discussion.”

Having previously discussed my concerns with the plan with leadership and the CEO, I stood up and addressed the group. The CEO shared the high-level plan with all of you. I have a series of questions. “Please raise your hands if you will be able to transport yourself to the Midwest Production Facility (which was over 700 miles away) within the 24-hour expected period.” Maybe 80% of the group raised their hands.

“Please keep your hands up, if you can afford to do this at your own expense?” Maybe 55% of the attendees had their hands up. “Who could go without needing to bring their family to have those related costs covered?” Hands continued to go down. “Now, who could remain there for at least 2 weeks?” More hands went down. Then the final question, “Who will be able to do this at their own expense?” At this point, there were perhaps 70 hands up, and most of those people seemed uncertain about the response.

The CEO believed people would always drop anything to be available for the company but never considered that they might not be as available as they would like to be, given the elements of their personal lives. This led to a lengthy discussion, which resulted in changes to the company plan and related policies.

The company would, in the event of a short-term staff relocation, cover all transportation costs, arrange lodging for the employee and their direct family, cover all related food expenses, and provide an upfront initial per diem to offset the initial costs. When the next hurricane impacted the region, over 700 personnel were temporarily relocated to manage the additional production at the Midwest Production Facility, rather than at the facility in the impacted Southern Region.

 

In summary

These three real-life experiences are often overlooked and could hinder your recovery before it even begins. Key things to ask yourself are:

1.         Can you reach your personnel in an emergency for notification and incident  escalation purposes?

2.         Are you cheating when you test your plans?

3.         How can you ensure staff are available for responses?

 

James Knox is a resiliency expert with an innovative spirit who thrives when building meaningful solutions to various daily problems in the corporate world. He is an avid outdoorsman and loves extreme rock crawling, fishing, and hunting. As a survivalist, James has learned from necessity how to prepare for life’s bumps and thrive with practical and sensible solutions, supporting his family's self-sustaining lifestyle.

 

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