Chamber Confederation targets continuity planning for businesses

Chamber Confederation targets continuity planning for businesses
Jeffery Beckles

NASSAU, BAHAMAS — While stressing the need for businesses to have continuity plans, Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) chief executive Jeffrey Beckles noted that a sustained event like COVID-19 was a ‘completely different story’.

In an interview with Eyewitness News, Beckles said: “Every business should have a business continuity plan regardless of what the circumstances are. When we are preparing for hurricanes we prepare for a single event. When you have a COVID-19 kind of event that is a sustained event, not just over a few days that’s a different story.  The event is still ongoing. I don’t know if there are any continuity plans that call for that kind of sustained impact. The fact that we had Dorian eight months ago and now this certainly speaks to the need for business continuity planning but unlike Dorian which was a single event that occurs and is gone this one isn’t.”

Beckles added: “Ultimately business continuity plans while in the immediate term will be effective, I don’t know if there is a continuity plan for a sustained event that is impacting global life. There is not a sector globally that isn’t impacted. We ought to have continuity planning but how do you mitigate against an extended event like COVID-19 which is having an impact that we have not been truly able to measure yet.”

Beckles noted that continuity planning enabled the Chamber to begin working remotely ‘right away’ once the work environment changed and the country was shut down.

He said: “We never lost contact with our members nor our international partners. With a strong partnership  with Cable Bahamas we have been able to achieve that.”

Beckles noted that the Chamber intends to address the issue of continuity planning in the coming weeks.