“Business continuity is not a project with a beginning and ending date, it is a program to be managed indefinitely.” (Business Continuity Management)
“BCM is not a project, it is a culture!” (Deutsche Bank IT-director)
In its aim to develop a culture of preparedness among the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the country, UP ISSI has been conducting Business Continuity Planning (BCP) training workshops since 2014.
The key objective of these BCP training workshops is to train participants in formulating their own BCPs so they can develop their capabilities to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies and disasters.
Among the partners of the Institute in its BCP training workshops are the Department of Trade and Industry (through its SME Roving Academy, and Small Business Counsellors Course), Department of Agrarian Reform (through its Coop Strengthening Program), and the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF).
In 2015, UP ISSI and PDRF conducted six runs of BCP training workshops for MSMEs in the economic lifeline industries.
For 2016 to 2017, the Institute will continue its partnership with PDRF and extend it to the Humanitarian Leadership Academy to capacitate 1,000 MSMEs in the country on BCP preparation. The pilot run of the BCP Workshop for SME partners of Unilever Philippines will be conducted on 25 and 26 June 2016 in Calbayog, Samar.
UP ISSI’s extension specialists Reynold Ferdinand G. Manegdeg and Joanna Rose T. Laddaran, who attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Train-the-Trainer Workshop on Promoting SME Business Continuity Plans in Chinese Taipei last August 2013, serve as resource persons for the BCP training workshops being conducted by the Institute. Manegdeg also participated in the APEC seminar Should Governments Make It Compulsory for SMEs to Adopt Business Continuity Planning to Help Mitigate the Impact of Natural Disasters? held in Bangkok, Thailand last 10 June 2015.
Most recently, Laddaran was part of the APEC capacity building training workshop on Strengthening Governments’ Role in Promoting Business Continuity Planning to Mitigate Against Disasters organized by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Government of Australia and held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 7 June 2016.