CASE STUDY ON COMPETENCY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM (Business Continuity, Crisis Management, and Emergency Management)

Client: Confidential

Sector: Power Transmission

Location: GCC

The Client is responsible for the development, operations and maintenance of high-voltage power and bulk water transmission networks within a GCC Country and beyond. It provides secure, sustainable, economic, and reliable transmission networks that connect generation companies to distribution companies, as well as other end-users. It comes under the National Energy Company of the Country.

The Client has to be compliant with the Nation’s Regulatory BCM Framework and was certified by them. However, to ensure continual improvement of BCM in the organization, it had invited us to conduct a BCM Competency Assessment and Development for its various roles.

This Competency Development project is one of its kind and probably one of the first in BCM area with a project duration of 6 months.

Pain Points / Client Situation

The organization had a mandate from the Regulatory Body about development of its competency around business continuity. The leadership were also concerned regarding the level of competency that the staff have in terms of handling emergencies, disruptions and crises. Hence, they wanted to perform a 360-degree assessment for about 400+ staff (in-scope) around BCM covering all the areas mentioned previously.

The Client had developed a competency framework which was incomplete and lacked some significant details.

Our Engagement

The whole project was divided into the following three phases.

Our Contribution:

The whole project was divided into the following three phases.

We followed multiple approaches in order to assess the competency level of the organization as well as each of the 8 types of roles. We used the following approaches:

1. Comprehensive Questionnaire

2. In-person meetings and interactions

3. Visits to various locations

4. Participation in Tabletop Exercise

5. Documentation reviews

During the competency development phase for 3 months, we did the following major activities:

We did the following for the Client during this phase:

• Conducted about 17 different training sessions, awareness sessions and workshops across its 4 physical locations,

• We also designed the content and graphics for 7 different emails to be sent to all employees,

• We designed 10 flexes (large size posters),

• We created multiple scripts for video messages which had to be record by leadership (including CEO)

  
  

The third phase of the project was to develop a plan for continual improvement of competencies, identify and put in place various Metrics and KPIs, to help the Client manage their overall performance on competency development around management of emergencies, crises, and business continuity.

We have also evaluated various software platforms for management of competency in the organization and based on various areas of assessments, we did recommend them on which one they should go for.

Results

1. Enhanced Competency Levels: Based on our survey, the project enhanced understanding and competency levels of various roles (8 roles from various levels of the organization, including top management) to a great extent.

2. Enhanced Confidence: The top management is now more confident about its staff and their capabilities to handle emergencies, disruptions, and crises.

3. Regulatory Compliance: The mandate from the regulatory body has been addressed and closed. The Client now has a proper framework, processes, procedures, metrics, and KPIs to manage the competencies of its staff.

4. Improved Crisis Management Preparedness: With our dedicated Crisis Management Simulation exercise with the top management (including the CEO and COO), and the crisis management training given, the top management is more confident about its preparedness for a crisis situation. The gaps identified during the simulation exercise and the actions they took to close them has resulted in better preparedness.

5. Automation and Technology Support: Based on the project, the Client has felt the need to take help through automation and use of other technologies like communication channels to enhance its capabilities to handle crises, business continuity, emergencies and incidents.

6. Building the Culture: Overall, there has been a lot of things done during these 6 months that has resulted in raising awareness and embedding a culture of safety, risk management, crisis management and business continuity. People have understood how important their roles are during such situations. Everyone feels that they are connected in some way or other.