Business Continuity & Crisis Management
Prepare financial institutions to maintain critical services during hurricanes, cyber incidents, utility failures and branch disruptions through robust continuity and crisis-management planning.
What this workshop addresses
In Jamaica, disruption is not a question of if but when — hurricane season arrives every year, cyber incidents strike without warning, and a flooded branch or failed network can halt service overnight. For financial institutions, the stakes are highest of all: members still need access to their money precisely when conditions are hardest. Business Continuity & Crisis Management is a practical, high-impact workshop from Blakes' Training Institute that prepares your organisation to keep operating through any disruption. Participants learn to assess continuity risks, build and test business continuity and disaster recovery plans, establish incident command and crisis communication protocols, and lead teams calmly through hurricanes, cyber incidents, power and network failures, and branch outages. Through tabletop simulations built on realistic Jamaican scenarios — a Category 4 storm, a ransomware event, a branch evacuation — your team leaves with rehearsed plans, clear roles and the confidence to protect members, staff and operations when it matters most.
Recommended participants
- CEOs, general managers and executive teams; operations and branch managers; IT and systems managers; risk and compliance officers; HR and communications staff; board and risk committee members; and facility and security officers responsible for physical premises, evacuation and asset protection.
Key objectives
- By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- Understand the disruption landscape — identify continuity risks including hurricanes, floods, cyber incidents, utility failures, pandemics and civil disruption.
- Conduct a business impact analysis — identify critical functions, maximum tolerable downtime and dependencies so priorities are impact-based.
- Build robust BCP/DR plans — cover people, premises, technology, data backup, alternate sites and manual workarounds.
- Establish incident command and crisis communication — define roles, escalation chains and decision authority and protocols for staff, members, regulators and media.
- Test and rehearse the plan — design and run tabletop exercises and simulations, capture lessons and improve plans.
- Embed resilience into culture — maintain preparedness through hurricane-season drills, employee awareness, supplier-continuity checks and continuous improvement.
Key measurable KPIs after training
- 90%+ of participants pass the post-workshop continuity assessment (target score: 80%+)
- Current, board-approved BCP/DR plan updated or developed within 60 days, including business-impact analysis and defined recovery objectives
- Documented tabletop exercise completed within 90 days, with lessons-learned actions assigned and tracked
- Critical functions demonstrated as recoverable within stated recovery objectives during exercises
- Hurricane-season readiness including verified checklists, emergency kits, contact trees and alternate-work arrangements
- Tested staff and member crisis-communication protocols with current contact data
- Fewer continuity findings in internal audits and regulatory reviews, with sustained readiness through annual re-testing and refresher training
How best to use this training
Train the crisis-management team together — executives, operations, IT, HR and communications — so the incident-command structure is built and rehearsed jointly. Schedule the programme before hurricane season where possible. Use the workshop's business-impact analysis and continuity templates on the institution's own operations during the session, and complete a tabletop exercise within 90 days. Align the programme with cybersecurity/fraud-response training, run pre-season readiness drills and annual full-plan exercises, and refresh plans whenever systems, suppliers or key personnel change. Retain plans, exercises, assessments and sign-offs as evidence of resilience.
Key topics
- Business continuity management
- Disaster recovery
- Hurricane preparedness
- Flood risk
- Cyber incident continuity
- Power and network outages
- Pandemic and civil disruption
- Business impact analysis
- Critical functions
- Maximum tolerable downtime
- Recovery priorities
- Recovery time objectives
- People and premises continuity
- Data backup
- Alternate sites
- Manual workarounds
- Incident command
- Crisis escalation
- Crisis communication
- Member notification
- Regulator communication
- Media communication
- Tabletop exercises
- Lessons learned
- Supplier continuity
- Annual plan testing