Improving Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on business

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to improve the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on business of the industry partner, VSI by using Action Research. VSI has developed its own BCP for Covid-19 in April 2020 to fulfil the requirement of its customers after the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. However, the existing BCP for Covid-19 is incomplete as it only covers the prevention, detection and restoration which covered up to the third lifecycle of BCM and in February 2021, workers of VSI were tested positive for Covid-19 and due to this, VSI received notice from Ministry of Health (MOH) to temporarily shut down 3 of its production plants in Senai, Johor which has caused some damages to VSI including financial wise and its reputation. In view of this, under both cycles of the Action Research, the existing BCP for Covid-19 has been revised to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on the business. Due to time limitation, this Action Research has only managed to improve the BCP by using the fifth lifecycle of BCM which is Exercising, Maintenance and Audit of Business Continuity Management (BCM) by revising the existing BCP twice and part of fourth lifecycle which is Building and Embedding a BCM Culture by including the training requirement for Covid-19 in the revised BCP.