There has been an argument as to whether whistle blowing should be considered an essential aspect when it comes to the issue of enhancing a better business continuity mismanagement system. This is the reason why the US Labor Department is collecting comments that will give a good direction and come up with new regulations that will have a long term effect of protecting whistle blowers (Honour 1).
Whistle blowers are mainly workers who voice issues about security, safety, and health concerns. Business continuity is an activity performed by many organizations to ensure that critical business functions are accessed and guaranteed by all the stakeholders concerned. Many people have assumed that business continuity should only be conducted or done when an organization is faced by a disaster (Honour 2).
Although this should not be the case, however, business continuity should be done or performed daily to maintain recoverability, service, and consistency. It has been argued that encouraging employees to report risky business operations in their organizations supports and enhances business continuity. This is because silenced workers will never feel free to work well.
In the long run, their potential will not be realized. This is a very important issue when looked at from a business continuity perspective. Perhaps there is a need to ponder on the question of whether or not whistle blowing should be encouraged as an essential aspect of business continuity (Honour 3) about disaster recovery and emergency management.
Workers should be given a voice as a way of getting a better insight into a given organization. This way, they stand a chance to better understand the risks faced by an organization without the knowledge of others or better still the public at large.
These risks can be hidden, but they may have a very large business impact on a given organizations’ continuity. For efficient business continuity, there is a need to have good disaster management and recovery measures that will ensure that huge losses are not incurred. Without good measures to mitigate such eventualities, an organization will find it hard to operate well, and this may come up as a challenge in a bid to compete well.
As much as whistle blowing can be encouraged as a way of identifying disasters in advance, several boards have seen this as a threat to their organizational and business operations and hence, not a good thing (Honour 2). Instead of appreciating such employees, the management and boards have seen them as enemies who are reporting the organization to a given regulatory or government body that will eventually punish them.
This should instead be seen as a way of encouraging employees to voice their concerns on areas they think the organization is not doing well. Organizations are advised to have their whistle blowing structures internally as a way of assessing their performance. If this is done efficiently, employees will feel that they are highly valued listened to and empowered (Honour 3).
This will give them another reason to work harder and ensure that the organization is successful. In other words, they will feel that they are part of the organization and in the process, give it their best.
This approach will likely create a good business continuity and disaster management approach. There are occasions where employees might see something that will hurt the organization and keep it to themselves. It might be because they fear to talk about such issues due to the consequences that might befall them (Honour 4). Business continuity will only be termed effective if the latest information that preceded it is well catered for.
Managers know very well that business continuity will only be guaranteed if there is a proper business impact analysis (Honour 4). There is no way that an organization can achieve considerable success without a proper business impact analysis. The impact analysis should be done while looking at the possible negative and positive scenarios that might befall an organization as a result of a given action.
This process will be flawed if employees and the management don’t work together harmoniously as expected (Honour 4). They should not feel that they are working under pressure from others. In this case, they should be free to reveal whatever they feel is important towards positive continuity of the organization. This means that they should be in a better position to disclose processes and procedures that are risky or disastrous than they may be presumed to be.
From this explanation, it is obvious that whistle bowing can come in handy in enhancing the achievement of proper disaster management and business continuity. A good whistle blowing process will ensure that there is a lot of confidentiality in information delivery, which will make it easy for participants to input their concerns without any fear (Honour 5).
Whistle blowing will make it easy to identify new disasters that have not been factored in a given organizations’ business continuity plan. If employees are encouraged to whistle blow, an organization will be safe from any disasters that might pose a threat to its continuity (Honour 6).
Works Cited
Honour, D. Why encouraging employees to report risky processes and behaviors supports business continuity. 2010. Web.