Work Group Recovery:
Where Will Your Employees Work After A Disaster?

By Alison Dunn

When your facility is no longer operational following a large-scale disaster, it’s not enough to simply invoke a disaster recovery plan. Where – and how – will your employees respond and recover if your building isn’t operational?

That’s where work group (or work area) recovery plans come into play. While disaster recovery plans generally focus more on the physical assets or data side of the business, a work group recovery plan focuses on having a place for people to work to get the business back up and running.“The concept of corporate work group recovery is actually much different from disaster recovery, although the terms are often mistakenly interchanged,” says Robert J. Alcorn, chief operating officer of Indianapolisbased n\Frame, Inc. “Work group emphasizes restoring employee operations and productivity, while disaster recovery typically focuses on salvaging physical assets. Companies require both efforts to fully recover from devastation.”

There are many options for work group recovery, including:

• Hot sites: Paying monthly subscriber fees to an independent vendor for the availability, space, equipment, and services of a fully operational facility
• Cold sites: A computer-ready space an independent vendor holds in reserve for the company’s own systems.
• Mobile recovery centers: Customdesigned, transportable structures outfitted with the necessary computer and telecommunications equipment which you can transport to your facility after the disaster
• Temporary facilities onsite, including tents or modular buildings, medical, catering facilities, etc.
• Telework (Telecommuting): Staff works remotely from home or alternate locations via computer and telephone

“The emergence of work area recovery as a high priority DR requirement is driving demand for more comprehensive, high availability services, similar to what customers traditionally associate with hotsite programs,” says Sandy Guidera, of Recovery Point Systems. “The result is a fully integrated service delivery model in which all of the components necessary for immediate resumption of full business functionality, including the work area facilities, hotsite services, recovery connectivity, secure hosting and data storage options from replication to tape storage are provided by one vendor at all inclusive locations. Work area recovery is the centerpiece of this approach.” And so with many options, and new vendor offerings, how do you develop a work group recovery plan? We spoke to a number of industry experts to discover what you need to consider when designing your own plan. Here, we outline the strategic issues of the plan, what important elements you should include, the guidelines you should use to create your plan and some common mistakes you should avoid.

Strategic Issues
“From a strategic perspective, each organization needs to evaluate how a work group strategy compliments its business processes,” says Jim Grogan, CISM, vice president of consulting product development for SunGard Availability Services. “Every issue probably has a straightforward answer, but only if the question is considered in advance of the crisis.”

In other words, the time to plan for work group recovery is not after a disaster has wiped out your facility. Instead, you need to plan that recovery well ahead of time, evaluating exactly who and what needs to be where after a disaster.

But where do you start? Marv Wainschel, of Eagle Rock Alliance, says the first step is to determine how many people you will need within specific time frames after the disaster.

“The obvious reason for this is to limit pre-disaster expense,” Wainschel says. “The fewer resources an organization needs to allocate pre-disaster, the less the expense.”

Next, once you understand which functional work groups you must recover first and the time it will take to recover them, you need to create a map of what people will work in what recovery place. Perhaps you can use a combination of facilities or alternatives until your primary facility is up and running. Would temporary facilities onsite, such as modular buildings, help restore work areas nearby employees’ homes, saving the inconvenience of commuting to an alternate facility?

John A. Jackson, executive vice president of Fusion Risk Management, Inc., says there are a few other strategic issues to take into account while planning, including:

• Logistics: How far must employees travel to reach the alternate facility, and how long will they stay?
• Communication: How will you tell employees who must go to the site, when to go and how to get there?
• Information: How will you protect and access non-digital information?
• Growth: How long will the recovery take? How will you grow the work force as the recovery proceeds?
• Public relations: How will you handle the press and the media?

Qwest Hosting’s Laurel Burton sums it up: “At the most fundamental level, an effective response and recovery plan is comprehensive, clearly outlines each group’s critical functions and its priority in the event of a disaster and provides processes that are achievable in the event of a disaster.”

Elements of the Plan
“A good plan identifies everyone’s critical functions, the time frames of recovery and the resources you’ll need to meet those requirements,” says Monica Goldstein, executive vice president of CAPS Business Recovery Services.

What else should your plan include? According to our experts, it should take into account:

• Communication with employees during the response and recovery
• Identifying critical personnel and when you will need them
• Coordination with outside organizations such as shipping, mail service, supply vendors, etc.
• Travel to the alternate site and commuting considerations
• The infrastructure available (food, rest areas, washroom facilities and more)
• Documentation, including production equipment, home phone numbers, cell numbers, e-mail addresses
• OSHA and NFPA regulations, as well as local codes for evacuation and shelter-in-place
• Prioritizes functions within the operation (you can’t keep everything up and running in a crisis situation)

The plan should also insert a heavy dose of reality into the planning scenario, says Steve Crimando, managing director of Extreme Behavioral Risk Management LLC.

“It’s difficult to model how people will actually respond during real events,” he says. “Have all members of the work group consider the emotional pulls that may accompany various scenarios. Their ability to stay, physically and mentally, on task can be critical to both response and recovery efforts.”

Finally, don’t forget to test the plan. “The most important issue is making sure people know what to do,” says Vin D’Amico, founder and president of Damicon LLC. “In many cases, time is a brutal adversary. This is why the bestprepared groups are those that practice to keep response time to a minimum.”

“A work group response and recovery plan is only as good as the planning and testing that goes into it,” agrees Scott Ridel, product marketing manager for LightEdge solutions Inc. “Each business unit is ultimately responsible for analyzing its critical processes and ensuring these activities are brought into the full business recovery plan.”

Guidelines for Planning
Once you’ve determined what you need in your plan, it’s time to choose the alternative, or alternatives, that best fit your needs. Do you choose a hot site, cold site, a mobile recovery service, telecommuting or a combination of more than one?

The following is a list of guidelines to help you choose.

• Does the solution meet both your office and technical requirements?
• Transportation: How will employees get there? Is there parking? A reasonable commute?
• How close is the solution to your facility? Will an area-wide disaster affect its operation also? Is there power redundancy?
• Is the solution shared? What if another company uses the location first?
• Is it expandable? Safe? Comfortable? Amenities close by?
• Recovery time vs. Cost (i.e. it can be either cheap or fast, but not usually both.)

If it seems complicated, try having an expert assist in the decision-making process, says Chris Alvord, CEO of COOP systems. “Vendors have a different vocabulary for the same features, and tend to obfuscate the issue to try for advantage,” he says. An expert can help you cut through the lingo and determine which option is right for you.

And remember, a work group recovery plan is about just that: Recovery. “Think simple and economical,” says Jim LaRue, president and senior consultant of Dreamcatcher Disaster Resilience, LLC. “Don’t worry about glamour, since this is survival mode.”

Mistakes to Avoid
When we polled the experts, they, not surprisingly, had seen plenty of planning errors over the years. Many reported the same mistakes happening again and again. Here are the most common pitfalls to avoid.

You overlook change management. Business processes change, workflows are adjusted and staff come and go. But a lot of companies don’t take that into account when either writing or updating plans. For each company change, you should review and update your plans, as well as ensure everyone who acts on the plan understands the changes.

You don’t plan for growth. It’s one thing to have a plan that allows mission-critical employees to work temporarily for the standard 72 hours. But you can’t assume your facility will be back up and running by then – and that everyone can return to work. Instead, your plan should include a scenario for the timely re-introduction of employees to the temporary work space.

You forget about security. You can’t just be so grateful for getting connected after a disaster that you forget security issues. Your plan should have adequate security to ensure your critical information isn’t available to the world. Don’t forget physical security either. The alternative work space should be safe for employees, as well as keep out anyone you don’t want there.

You don’t give employees a voice in the plan. You can’t assume, particularly after a large-scale disaster, that every employee is going to have restoring your business as his or her top priority. By not involving them in the plan, you may be missing some key interdependencies between the functions you deem critical and the different work groups. Without employee input, you might not be able to execute the solution as planned.

Your plan is too limited. Unfortunately, too many companies only plan for one type of disaster, such as a small fire, a leaky roof, or even losing only the facility. But a large-scale disaster can often mean you have to deal with more than one issue. For instance, after Hurricane Katrina, companies experienced multiple layers of failures, including wind damage, flooding, power outages, phone outages, cell phone outages, fuel shortages, infrastructure damage and more. The best way to deal with these issues is with an extensive business needs analysis and a complete recovery plan you test on a regular basis.

This article was published in the Disaster Resource GUIDE for Facilities (Fall 2006).

Acknowledgements
The Disaster Resource GUIDE would like to thank the following contributors:
Robert J. Alcorn, n\Frame, Inc.
Chris Alvord, CBCP, COOP Systems
Patricia Bennett, FBCI, The Patricia Bennett Group Inc.
Laurel Burton, Qwest Hosting
Mark Conron, FSI North America
Steve Crimando, MA, BCETS, Extreme Behavioral Risk Management LLC
Vin D’Amico, Damicon LLC
Greg Emry, Nor E First Response
Karl Forster, Lockstep Systems Inc.
Tommy Gardner, Remote Backup Systems
Monica Goldstein, CAPS Business Recovery Services
Jim Grogan, CISM, SunGard Availability Services
Sandy Guidera, Recovery Point Systems
Robert Hamilton, Cummins Power Generation
John A. Jackson, Fusion Risk Management, Inc.
Chuck Johnson, Unlimited Resources
Mark Kryzanowski, Asset Recovery Technologies
Jim LaRue, MBCP, CISSP, Dreamcatcher Disaster Resilience, LLC
Jim McFadden, VoiceGard
Bob Meeker, Preferred Communications
Mike Montgomery, Montgomery & Associates
Scott Riedel, LightEdge Solutions, Inc.
Jerry Shammas, AT&T
Rich Stapleton, Deployed Resources
Larry L. Smith, Institute for Crisis Management
Travis Thompson, LightEdge Solutions, Inc.
Marv Wainschel, Eagle Rock Alliance, Ltd.
Rob Wilson, Recovery Squad