Before the Pace Picks Up: Five BC Topics Worth Looking at Now

There are many business continuity areas that tend to get overlooked until a failure there causes or prolongs a breakdown. The current, relatively quiet time of year provides a good opportunity to review those areas, which include emergency management, remote workplaces, critical skills coverage, equipment readiness, and neglected business units.

[Related: Single Points of Failure: Protecting Yourself from Hanging by a Thread]

A Good Time to Look Under the Hood

In our most recent post, we looked at four BC issues that are worth BC practitioners’ attention at the turn of the year. Today’s blog builds on that discussion.

The five areas we’re going to look at today have several things in common. They are frequently overlooked, organizations often mistakenly believe they are under control, they relate to foundational capabilities, and they represent common failure points.

Another trait they share is that the current, relatively quiet (for most BC offices) time of year is the perfect time to check up on them.

Some of these areas relate to traditional BC. Others are about preventing outages rather than recovering from them (i.e., operational resilience).

All are worth your consideration before 2026 picks up steam.

Emergency Management: Are People Truly Prepared?

Emergency management is one of those areas that organizations often assume is taken care of even when it hasn’t received meaningful attention in years. Many companies have evacuation plans, floor wardens, or medical response teams on paper—but that doesn’t necessarily mean people know what to do when something happens.

This is a good time to check whether emergency response exercises and training are happening as intended. Have evacuation drills been conducted recently? Are action items from last year’s exercises being tracked and closed? If your organization relies on floor wardens, emergency response teams, or informal medical responders, have those individuals received refresher training?

In practice, these activities often get lost in the busyness of day-to-day operations. It’s not uncommon to hear employees say they’ve worked in a building for years without ever participating in an evacuation exercise. In other cases, drills are scheduled in a way that unintentionally excludes large portions of the workforce—such as choosing days when many people are working remotely, which undermines the value of the exercise.

Emergency response is not an area where documentation alone is sufficient. These are skills that require practice. People need to know where to go, how to communicate, and what their role is under stress. Given that employee safety is always the top priority, this is one of the most important areas to revisit before the pace picks up again.

Remote Work and Alternate Workspaces: Is the Strategy Clear?

From a business continuity perspective, remote work raises an important but sometimes overlooked question: where will people actually work if their primary workspace is unavailable?

Some organizations provide alternate work locations, such as another company site within commuting distance. Others place the responsibility on the individual to identify a suitable alternate workspace. Either approach can work, but only if it’s been thought through and communicated. At a minimum, organizations should be able to answer a simple question: has each employee identified an alternate workspace, yes or no?

There are also timing and coverage considerations. Even if someone has an alternate location, it may take hours or days for them to get set up and fully productive. During that transition, their role may still need to be covered. Understanding how long it takes for people to become functional at their backup workspace—and whether interim coverage is required—is an important part of realistic continuity planning.

Skills Backup: Eliminating Single Points of Failure

Closely related to workspace planning is the question of skills coverage. If a particular person is unavailable, is their work covered, or does it become a single point of failure?

This doesn’t require a one-to-one backup for every employee. In some environments, such as call centers, coverage may be shared across a group. In other cases, especially for specialized roles, specific backups may need to be identified and trained.

A practical way to approach this is by looking at roles rather than individuals. Which roles perform activities that would cause significant disruption if they weren’t covered? Are there specific skills, system accesses, or decision-making authorities that reside with only one person?

Identifying and addressing these gaps now can significantly reduce operational risk. It also supports other continuity strategies, such as remote work, by ensuring that temporary absences don’t translate into stalled operations.

Equipment Readiness: Hidden Risks in Plain Sight

Equipment is another area where risk can quietly increase over time. Even if your critical equipment and dependencies are documented in the BIA, it’s worth reviewing whether the underlying assumptions or conditions have changed.

From a numbers and condition perspective, are there pieces of critical equipment that are out of warranty, overdue for maintenance, or aging beyond their expected lifecycle? Are there single devices that represent a point of failure? Do you have sufficient backups, spare parts, chargers, or consumables to operate through a disruption?

Power and infrastructure deserve special attention. For example, does your building’s generator have the capacity to support current operational needs, or was it designed only for emergency lighting? If charging stations, devices, or other loads have been added over time, has the generator capacity been reassessed?

There’s also the supply side to consider. If you rely on vendors for spare parts or replacement equipment, are you confident they can deliver quickly during a disruption? Many organizations discover too late that replacement timelines are measured in days, not hours.

While the BC office may not own equipment management, this is a good time to raise questions with the appropriate departments and ensure that equipment-related risks are visible and addressed.

Roadmap Review: Making Sure Nothing Falls Through the Cracks

Finally, this is an ideal moment to step back and review your BC roadmap.

Continuity programs naturally focus on critical functions. This can leave less-critical areas unaddressed, sometimes for years. Over time, this creates uneven coverage across the organization. A simple review of your list of BC plans can quickly reveal which departments have never been addressed and which haven’t been updated in several years.

For critical functions, confirm that plans have been reviewed and updated within a reasonable timeframe, often within the last two years. For non-critical areas, a less frequent approach may be appropriate, but build a realistic plan to bring them into scope over time.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s ensuring that coverage across the organization reflects today’s priorities, risks, and realities rather than legacy assumptions.

Turning Reflection into Readiness

The period at the beginning of the year offers BC practitioners a rare opportunity to step back and look at areas that often escape attention during busier months. Reviewing emergency management, remote work strategies, skills coverage, equipment readiness, and roadmap completeness can uncover vulnerabilities that might otherwise remain hidden until they cause real problems.

None of these topics are new, and none require reinventing your BC program. Instead, they call for a thoughtful check of foundational capabilities—confirming that assumptions still hold, coverage is complete, and preparedness matches the realities of how the organization operates today.

If your organization would benefit from help reviewing these areas, identifying gaps, or prioritizing next steps, MHA Consulting can assist. We work with BC teams to translate reflection into practical improvements that strengthen resilience before the pace and the pressure pick up again.

Further Reading

• Single Points of Failure: Protecting Yourself from Hanging by a Thread
• The 6 Tasks Every Emergency Plan Should Address
• Get Out the Map: Why Your BCM Program Needs a Roadmap
• Home to Stay? Adapting to the Next Permanent Workplace
• Vulnerable Vendors: Supplier Weaknesses Put Your Organization at Risk