Prevalent Releasing Series of Free Business Resilience Resources to Assist Risk Managers with COVID-19 Pandemic Response

While pandemic planning is a subset of business resilience, it’s one that’s traditionally overlooked in favor of asset management, environmental hazards, critical data management, and other common concerns. As COVID-19 continues to debilitate business operations worldwide, organizations are now compelled to strengthen their processes around remote workforces, single points of failure, supply chain exposures, and other operational disruptions associated with pandemics.

As such, hundreds of risk managers have downloaded our free pandemic business resilience assessment for internal business units and third parties over the past week.

I’m pleased to announce that Prevalent will continue to offer additional, complimentary resources to help address immediate requirements around pandemic preparation and readiness over the coming weeks. Our pandemic risk assessment templates will support organizations in rapid response and communications, while providing a baseline for longer-term resilience planning.

Regular Distribution of Pandemic Resources Starting Today

Our pandemic planning resources will be distributed on a regular basis starting today and can be freely modified to reflect your unique needs. The templates incorporate best-practice baselines across industries, and therefore can be integrated with any other risk assessment content you may be using.

Here’s what’s coming:

• Communication templates for customers, staff, the supply chain and press
• Escalation tree examples for effective internal communication paths
• Critical third-party discovery and mapping guidelines
• Recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) definitions and criteria for critical services
• Secure remote working guidance for staff, such as phishing reminders
• Broader business resilience policies encompassing key governance objectives

Risk-Associated Template Mappings for Prevalent Customers Using Pandemic Assessments

Prevalent can provide templates against associated risks within the Prevalent Platform. This provides a streamlined way to distribute content to third parties and understand internal business continuity gaps, along with ensuring secure version control and ownership. Templates can be stored as demonstrable evidence of remediation, and task management ensure ownership of risks. If you’re a Prevalent customer, please contact your Customer Success Manager to activate the new questions.

New Pandemic Communications Template Kit

Our first template set in this series covers internal and external communications. Pandemic business resilience measures require constant dialogue to inform necessary parties of impacts and responses. By providing your supply chain and customer base with clear, informative updates, your company can provide assurance as the community works together to maintain critical functions.

> Download the free Pandemic Communications Template Kit

The communication templates are generalized to address a wide ecosystem of stakeholders. Where appropriate, placeholders are embedded to enable you to target specific audiences.

The pandemic communication templates in this set include:

• Key Personnel: General Business – Select templates based on low/medium/high opportunities for infection, plus business stance insights related to remote working, customer communication channels and morale.
• Key Personnel: Internal Managers & Team Leaders – Share guidance on identifying potential or emerging staff capacity issues at different phases of a pandemic, as well as providing wider critical functional support.
• Third Parties/Supply Chain – Outline expected communications and notifications, while highlighting what key commitments are to be maintained during the response phase.
• Customers – Provide context and insight into pandemic response mechanisms and describe how critical communications will be escalated to customers in the event of service disruptions.
• Press/Public Relations – Highlight the business stance in the current climate and key responses invoked to address the pandemic.

Supporting material includes activation criteria, as well as guidance for identifying the current status and rating of a pandemic as defined by the World Health Organization.

Prevalent Is Here to Help

The coronavirus crisis is likely presenting you with unprecedented challenges – both personal and professional. We hope these templates makes your job a little bit easier in the face of this crisis. Once the dust settles, keep in mind that Prevalent also offers a free, one-hour third-party risk management program maturity consulting session. In the meantime, everyone at Prevalent wishes good health to you, your team, and your families.