Service Continuity Planning
Building resilience and adaptability to ensure service continuity during emergencies is important to help sustain and strengthen organizations and the communities they serve. This is especially true for community organizations that work with and provide services to at-risk populations and other groups that may be particularly vulnerable to disruptions.
The Canadian Red Cross supports organizations in developing their own Service Continuity Plan through dedicated training and workshops, offered free of charge.
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The primary goal of a Service Continuity Plan is to ensure the continued delivery of services critical to an organization’s operations and to the community members who rely on them until normal or "new normal" operations can resume.
A Service Continuity Plan is:- A compilation of essential information about your organization, ensuring that key details are easily accessible.
- A document outlining strategies that describe the steps your organization has taken or will take to enhance the resilience of critical services against high-risk hazards.
- A set of procedures informing staff about how your organization will adapt its operations during disruptions to ensure seamless service delivery.
The workshop explores the six steps to Service Continuity Planning, specifically, how to:
- Build organizational support to do Service Continuity Planning.
- Identify which services are critical, and which can be paused during a disruption.
- Identify the highest risk hazards that threaten critical services.
- Identify and prioritize potential strategies to make critical services more resilient.
- Document vital information so it’s available during a disruption, the strategies the organization will take to ensure service continuity of critical services, and the procedures to be executed during a disruption (e.g., pivoting to virtual service if the facility is closed).
- Test the plan for gaps and keep it up to date.
The Service Continuity Planning Workshop is designed for community-based organizations that want to strengthen their ability to keep essential services running during disruptions.
Best suited for:
- Non-profits, charities, and community or faith-based groups
- Small to medium organizations with limited emergency planning capacity
- Agencies serving populations who are at-risk or in vulnerable situations
- For-profit organizations or large institutions
- Organizations seeking advanced, technical planning
Service Continuity Planning 101
The Canadian Red Cross offers a monthly webinar called "Service Continuity Planning 101" as part of our Prepared Together webinar series. This introductory webinar provides a high-level overview of the concepts covered in the full-length workshop. Watch this video to learn what Service Continuity Planning is and discover the six key steps involved in creating a Service Continuity Plan.
Watch how Service Continuity Planning helps organizations stay prepared and protect the communities they serve.