The 1-Day course for Building a Business Continuity Plan to deal with Pandemic Influenza packs vital information into an action-oriented format to help organisations prepare for possible outbreaks of influenza. It’s a risk that is always present to a greater or lesser degree. To counter it, participants are guided by expert trainers through the differences in a pandemic-specific plan to the optimal ways to exercise and maintain the plan. Thorough step-by-step instructions, using a selection of appropriate tools for project management, data gathering and creating the plan, are all part of the course. But the two weeks that follow the course are of critical important too.
It’s during these two weeks that the skills acquired in the BCOE-PF1 course need to be applied to anchor them firmly. This corresponds the activity period for all courses like this, during which participants must put their knowledge into practice. It has been observed that active use of skills within the two weeks that immediately follow the course leads to long term proficiency. Waiting more than two weeks typically means that knowledge and skills evaporate – unlike the threat of a pandemic, whether in the form of the perennial common flu virus, or the H1N1 or H5N1 viruses.
A willingness to share the main points of the training with others and to identify opportunities to apply them are a good basis for staying within the ‘2 week rule’. This is a good approach to use for any fast-paced, information-packed course on a specific subject. It suits the BCOE-PF1 1-Day Pandemic Influenza Continuity Plan in particular. When BCOE-PF1 is offered to business continuity team members as the continuation of an overall DRI International curriculum, it becomes even easier to apply the principles of business continuity because they build on the same platform used for other DRI International courses.