contingency plan example in business plan

What Is A Contingency Plan & How Do You Create One?

Updated: Jun 15, 2024, 12:20pm

Table of Contents

What is a contingency plan, benefits of contingency planning, 3 contingency plan examples, how to create a contingency plan in 7 steps, bottom line, frequently asked questions (faqs).

Many companies take the time to create a business plan and then follow it. This is touted as a way to achieve your goals successfully. However, unexpected incidents can derail the plan’s progress. This is why a contingency plan is so important. Learn what a contingency plan is and how to go about creating one for your company.

A contingency plan is a “plan B” that helps a business address specific situations or incidents that may or may not be out of its control. A contingency plan is the way that your team should react if there is something that interrupts the normal course of business. Contingency plans are often found as part of emergency planning, disaster recovery and risk management. It’s important to know how you want to proceed when the situation prevents you from running things as business as usual.

Contingency Planning vs. Crisis Management

Contingency planning is the process of creating a backup plan or several possible plans. This differs from crisis management, which is the actual response to a crisis. The actual response often utilizes one of the contingency plans created but addresses the incident in real time.

Contingency Planning vs. Risk Management

Contingency planning and risk management are closely related but different processes. Contingency planning addresses the “what if” situations and develops a plan that will work around those situations. Risk management is a proactive approach that companies use to prevent loss or disasters. So rather than being reactive like a contingency plan, a risk management plan looks to stop adverse events from happening in the first place.

Businesses need to be agile to remain successful in a variety of market and work conditions. Here are some benefits of contingency planning that you should consider:

• Saves time: Management is not stopping to develop a plan. All they need to do is assess the situation and implement the contingency plan.
• Saves money: Downtime for a business is costly. Contingency plans limit the costs of being forced on the sideline.
• Quick recovery time: Contingency plans redirect everyone so what they are doing is productive despite the adverse incident.
• Minimizes damages: A contingency plan can reduce the effects of a disastrous situation that would otherwise lead to massive damages to the business’s property and equipment.
• Avoid negative press: When things go wrong, the press can get wind of it, which can be negative publicity for the company. Contingency plans keep the business running with minimal impact on operations.

Let’s look at some examples to illustrate better why contingency plans are necessary and how businesses reacted.

Example 1. A Pandemic Hits

The Covid-19 pandemic forced many businesses to come up with a contingency plan on the fly. Many white-collar jobs were sent home for employees to do their job from the safety of their homes. Other businesses, such as restaurants, had to pivot to expanding their take-out operations and slowly opening up dining experiences.

Example 2. A Supplier Has a Delayed Shipment

Many businesses rely on a supply chain to provide certain materials in order to create and deliver their products. When there is an issue with the supply chain, the business must be prepared to deal with it. This could mean shifting a marketing focus on other products not affected or anticipating delivery delays and notifying customers of the issues and perhaps offering them a promotion for their patience.

Example 3. Majority of Staff Calls In Sick on the Same Day

When a bug is going around, it can be challenging to keep it from affecting your entire staff. If it happens that everyone gets sick on the same day, you need to have a plan in place to address the issue. This could mean having a temporary staffing agency already vetted out for help or having the employees who are on duty do double duty, taking on additional tasks to get the job done.

Creating a contingency plan doesn’t need to be difficult. Follow these seven steps to develop your contingency plan, from creating a policy state and implementing preventive controls to testing and training employees and maintaining your contingency plan.

Here’s how to create a contingency plan in seven steps:

Step 1. Create a Policy Statement

A policy statement is the outline of the authorization that exists to develop a contingency plan. This might be something as simply stating a possible scenario and noting that owners have put this plan in place.

Step 2. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis

This step digs into what would happen if no contingency plan existed. It prioritizes the systems that are imperative to the business functions.

Step 3. Implement Preventative Controls

This step is designed to mitigate any adverse scenario’s impact on the business. The goal is to reduce the costs associated with running the business on a contingency plan basis.

Step 4. Develop Contingency Strategies

These are recovery strategies that help the business ensure that it will recover quickly and efficiently after a disruption occurs. Contingency strategies may be specific to the type of disruption that happens.

Step 5. Write Out the Contingency Plan

This step takes the strategies and writes out an action plan that is designed to overcome the disruption. It is a detailed response that allows the business operation to continue to work.

Step 6. Test and Train Employees

Every contingency plan should be shared with employees well in advance of needing to enact the plan. Employees should be trained on what to do in specific scenarios and help keep the business operations running as smoothly as possible.

Step 7. Maintain the Plan

Keep the plan updated based on current systems and organizational changes. You don’t want to implement the plan and then run into a hiccup because a key employee is no longer with the firm or the system doesn’t allow you to do what you want to do.

You can’t control many disastrous situations that can occur, but you can plan for them. Remember to think about your resources and how you can overcome obstacles to keep your business operations running smoothly after a disaster happens.

What is the purpose of a contingency plan?

A contingency plan exists to deal with unexpected adverse situations, which are often disasters that disrupt your ability to run your business.

What is a good contingency plan?

Good contingency plans address the many possible disasters that may happen. It might address natural disaster scenarios or supply chain issues. A good contingency plan helps you address many different types of disruptions.

What is another term for contingency?

Other terms for contingency planning include crisis management, emergency planning and risk management.

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Kimberlee Leonard has 22 years of experience as a freelance writer. Her work has been featured on US News and World Report, Business.com and Fit Small Business. She brings practical experience as a business owner and insurance agent to her role as a small business writer.

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Contingency Plan Examples

40 detailed contingency plan examples (& free templates).

Good strategies always involve a contingency plan in case the original plan backfires. In some cases, the original plan may not be as successful as you expect which is why you need a contingency plan example to achieve the same goal . We have heard the term “Plan B” before and this in its simplest way, is a contingency plan.

Table of Contents

• 1 Contingency Plan Examples
• 2 What is a contingency plan?
• 3 Contingency Plan Templates
• 4 When to use a contingency plan?
• 5 Using a contingency plan example in risk project management
• 6 Business Contingency Plan Templates
• 7 Steps in contingency planning
• 8 Creating your contingency plan
• 9 Contingency Plan Samples
• 10 The challenges that may come with contingency planning

What is a contingency plan?

The steps taken by an organization when an unexpected situation or event occurs is a contingency plan. A contingency plan example may be positive like when there’s an unexpected surplus in the cash flow. But more often than not, the contingency planning process mostly refers to negative events.

The events which might have a bearing on the organization’s financial health, reputation or on its ability to continue with business operations. Such events may include natural disasters, fire, network failure, and a data breach, to name a few.

Having a contingency plan template helps you make sure that there’s always a continuity in the business. Most of the bigger business organizations have sets of business contingency plan templates for various potential threats. These undergo extensive research and the resulting appropriate responses get subjected to full practice even before the crisis occurs.

You can consider a contingency plan as a proactive approach as compared to crisis management, which is more of a reactive approach. Having a contingency plan ensures that you’re always prepared for any eventuality. Conversely, a plan for crisis management enables you to control the response after the eventuality occurs.

Contingency Plan Templates

When to use a contingency plan?

Also, keep in mind that the design of a contingency plan template is only for risks that can you can identify and not for unknown or unidentified risks. This is for the simple reason that you cannot make a plan if you don’t know the risk.

It’s also worth noting that contingency plans don’t only exist in anticipation should things go wrong but you can also create one to make the most of strategic opportunities.

For instance, you have come to know of a new type of software for training that’s about to get released soon. Should this occur during the project, you can create a contingency plan on how to include this into the training stage of your project .

Using a contingency plan example in risk project management

As mentioned earlier, a contingency plan example responds to a negative event that might affect or tarnish the reputation of an organization or its financial standing. In business, however, a business contingency plan template isn’t always negative. There are cases of positive contingency plans too.

Also, keep in mind that the contingency planning process is a proactive strategy, unlike crisis management which is a reaction to something that has happened. A contingency plan accounts for any disruptive events to ensure that the company is always prepared if and when such events should occur.

Contingency plans are usually part of the risk management department and project managers should know that the plan is simply an outline. However, there are times when the project may extend beyond this. This means that the manager can be more prepared to make changes in the plan if he deems it would be more effective.

Risk management isn’t the same as the contingency planning process. Risk management is more about establishing, assessing, mitigating, avoiding, sharing, transferring, and accepting risks, whereas a contingency plan focuses on developing steps for when a risk occurs. But they share a common aspect. They both describe the steps to take in such an occurrence.

In its simplest form, a contingency plan definition is what you should do when an unexpected event takes place. Simpler still is “What if….?”, then creating an outline of the steps that answer this question.

Business Contingency Plan Templates

Steps in contingency planning

Project management always involves several entry points for risks that you have to consider for a contingency plan example. Here are some risk factors that you should take into account for a contingency plan template:

• The physical aspect where losses can happen caused by damage to facilities, equipment or information because of natural disasters or an accident.
• Technical issues may be a risk factor too, where the system stops functioning as needed for the delivery of the project as scheduled and within the budget.
• Human resources can be another risk too as teams may leave projects, get sick or get terminated.
• In a much larger scale, risk factors beyond the project manager’s control are social and political changes. As an example, you can work with a contract which can drastically change depending on who’s in control. Nothing remains stable with risk factors. Communities can even protest against projects and bring them to a halt.
• There are also liability issues where there are potential threats in the form of compensation plans and legal actions.

Here are the basic steps in the contingency planning process:

• Make it a point to know which resources can you use in the event of an emergency and in which part of the contingency plan you can apply these resources.
• Identify important dates that, if you miss, might negatively affect the plan. For instance, getting approval from committees which rarely meet.
• Know your plan. Check its weaknesses and strengths. Identify slack which you may find.
• Check for any points in the plan where you can apply alternative routes and evaluate each scenario to make your plan more flexible.
• Use your knowledge and experience in discerning patterns in the ebb and flow of the activities in your project to make it more efficient.

Creating your contingency plan

You need a lot of planning and research when creating a contingency plan example. But planning ahead, with each plan makes things easier for you. When creating one for your company, follow these steps:

• Identify your resources and prioritize them Do research throughout the organization so you can identify then prioritize the integral resources in your organization.
• Identify the most significant risks You need to identify any potential threats to the researched resources. If you need to, meet with executives, and employees to get more a holistic picture of how events can affect your resources. To be more precise, bring with you a consultant or a specialist in the identification of risks.
• Draft a contingency plan template Although you may come up with plans for each of the risks individually, it’s recommended to begin with the threats you consider high priority. This refers to the ones which have a high likelihood of occurring and would have the most significant impacts. As time goes by, you may start working toward coming up with plans for the lower-priority risks. When drafting plans for identified risks, start asking yourself about the steps to take so that the organization can go back to normal operations. Take into account factors like employee activity, communications, timelines , and staff responsibilities. Based on these, you can then make a plan for each of the risks.
• Share the plans Make sure that all employees and stakeholders have access to each plan as soon as you’ve completed them and had them approved. You may want to consider using a mobile application for this very important step. This could make the contingency plan together with similar documents directly available to all of the employees through their mobile service. This method also ensures that every employee has easy access to the updated plans for when the need arises.
• Maintain the plans As the organization undergoes changes, make sure that you reflect such changes in your business contingency plan template. There’s also a need to rehearse the plan with stakeholders regularly so that the key players know their roles and responsibilities.

Contingency Plan Samples

The challenges that may come with contingency planning

Managers will always get confronted with challenges that they should consider before and while creating contingency plans. These challenges include:

• Only focusing on “Plan A” By nature, people only want to work on a single solution. This may be the reason why a contingency plan doesn’t get the proper attention it deserves. They all hope “Plan A” succeeds and they think that focusing too much on “Plan B” might potentially be damage their success. As managers, they should stress how important a contingency plan is as it serves as your safeguard to help facilitate success instead of obstructing it. This means that the contingency plan should never get shelved. Instead, you must make it readily accessible.
• A small probability of using the plan Because of the small probability that you will ever use the contingency plan, many believe there’s no urgency in creating one. That means the plan could find itself at the very bottom of the company’s list of tasks if anyone will create it at all. There is a need for this plan for any project, even if the company has to invest a little more in it. When you decide to create a comprehensive contingency plan, you will feel the pay off when you end up needing it.

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What Is Contingency Planning? [+ Examples]

Published: January 13, 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown, more than ever, the importance of being prepared with a contingency plan for the unexpected, especially when it comes to business continuity.

While some unexpected interruptions can be due to situations outside of your control, some issues arise that may be caused by internal errors. Unexpected problems can also be positive, like a sudden influx of interest in a new product.

Regardless of the scenario, it's essential to prepare for everything, and contingency planning helps you do so. This post will explain what contingency planning is, outline the steps you can follow to create your own plan, and give examples that you can use for inspiration.

• Contingency Planning
• Business Contingency Plan
• Making a Contingency Plan
• Contingency Plan Timeline
• Contingency Plan Example

Contingency Plan Definition

What is a contingency plan? Simply put, a contingency plan is an action plan designed to help organizations respond to a potential future incident. Think of it as a backup plan, or plan B to guide organizations through a worst-case scenario.

Contingency plans are helpful for all types of organizations, from businesses to non-profits, to government organizations. While these scenarios may never come to fruition, it’s important to have a plan in place so that your team isn’t panicking or scrambling to deal with an unfavorable event at the last minute.

What is contingency planning?

Contingency planning is a proactive process of creating a strategy to help you prepare for any scenario that can affect your business, regardless of the likelihood of its occurrence.

These plans shouldn't focus solely on situations that may harm your business. For example, you may experience a significant increase in revenue during a specific period due to changes in market behavior. This is a good scenario, but you will still need to adapt your operations to scale and appropriately meet the new demands of your growing audience.

Contingency Planning vs. Crisis Management

Contingency planning is also different from crisis management , as it is not a reaction to something that has already happened but more so a plan for if and when something may happen. However, a contingency plan can help you with crisis management when issues arise.

Contingency Planning vs. Risk Management

Risk management is the identification, mitigation, and assessment of potential risks that may affect your organization. This process helps an organization prevent losses before they occur and aids in assessing whether or not certain risks are worth taking. Contingency planning can be a component of risk management since that process helps organizations survive these potential risks.

To ensure your business is prepared for everything, it's crucial to understand how to create a contingency plan.

What is a business contingency plan?

A business contingency plan is a strategy that outlines the steps your business’ teams will take in the event of a crisis occurring. It is essentially the backup plan that goes into action when the worst-case scenario occurs. The goal of your contingency plan is to help your business stay up and running after an issue arises.

Business Continuity Plan vs. Contingency Plan

Although their names vary by few letters, business continuity and contingency plans are different concepts. Continuity is the ability of your business to continue functioning after an incident that has disrupted operations occurs. A contingency plan is an action plan that goes into place if an incident were to happen.

Contingency plans can significantly impact whether your business can achieve continuity. Being able to react and take action during a crisis can dictate whether or not your business can emerge from the other side and continue normal business operations.

You can think of it like this: your continuity plans contain five sections: program administration, governance, business impact analysis, strategies and requirements, and training and testing. If your business also uses contingency plans, it could be part of the strategies and requirements section, which dictates how your business will respond to a crisis if it occurs.

Contingency Planning: How to Make a Business Contingency Plan

Creating a contingency plan is responding to the question of "What if?"

What if your storefront floods? Or what if your supplier goes out of business? The responses to the what-ifs are contingency plans. These scenarios aren't necessarily going to happen, but if there is a possibility that they'll affect your business, you're prepared if they do.

Below we'll discuss the steps that go into contingency planning.

Contingency Planning in 7 Steps

1. identify critical business functions..

This first step is the most important aspect of your planning, as it sets the tone for why your plans need to exist in the first place.

During this phase, identify all critical areas essential to keeping your business up and running every day. As these operations are imperative to success, you need to have plans to ensure that these operations continue, regardless of whatever scenarios arise.

You can think of it like this: these critical areas keep your business up and running on a day-to-day basis. Other areas are important, but these are the main functions that keep you afloat. Given this, you want to be prepared for anything and everything that may happen that can affect the critical areas, whether positive or negative. Contingency planning is exactly that.

Identifying these areas helps you move on to the next step as you begin brainstorming possible scenarios that can impact them.

2. Conduct a scenario assessment.

Once you've identified the critical operations of your business, you'll want to conduct a scenario assessment to identify situations that will affect these functions and put stress on your day-to-day operations.

For example, if your business operates out of a storefront, keeping your storefront up and running is a critical area of your business's success. Maybe you launch a new product that attracts more interest than you thought, and you need to deal with higher in-store traffic and a lack of products to satisfy the market. While it is a positive situation that will draw in more revenue, it can still have negative repercussions for your business if you don't deal with it when it happens.

You can think of this stage as similar to a risk assessment, but the possibilities are positive and negative. It may be helpful to meet with people who work in these critical areas and understand what they think may cause interruptions to their job duties and barriers to their success. Ask them how they feel situations will impact them and how they would deal with each scenario.

If you come up with a long list of threats, you can prioritize them based on their likelihood of occurring and how significant their impact would be on your business.

3. Create contingency plans for each scenario.

During this phase, you'll create contingency plans. Begin with the highest priority "threats," or those most likely to occur and most likely to cause significant stress to your business.

Outline the scenarios, people to inform, and the roles and responsibilities involved parties will have when they respond. We'll go over an example below, but a helpful template to follow can be:

• Outlining the scenario,
• Determine the probability of it occurring,
• Explain how you'll prepare ahead of time,
• Detail what the response will be if and when it happens.

Once you've created your plans, distribute them to key stakeholders in each scenario, so everyone understands what they are responsible for and can prepare ahead of time.

4. Get your plan approved.

Once you’ve come up with a desired plan of action, it’s time to get approval from stakeholders and management. If you’re creating both department-level and company-wide plans, this is especially important. Your plan won’t be a success unless there is buy-in from key members of your team and management. Once all parties agree that the course of action described in the contingency plan works for everyone, you can move forward with confidence.

5. Share the plan with your team.

Once your plan is approved, it’s time to distribute it. Putting it in a shared folder accessible to everyone creates transparency and makes it readily available if the time comes.

Make sure the parties involved know what they’re responsible for in the plan, that way you can execute the plan seamlessly should the worst-case scenario occur.

6. Test your plans.

As with all plans, it's essential to continuously test (more on that in the next section) and update them over time. As businesses scale and change, your business needs will likely change, and specific scenarios will no longer have as significant of an impact. There may also be new scenarios to plan for that you hadn't anticipated or thought of when you were a smaller operation.

It can be helpful to create a timeline that you'll use to spend dedicated periods reviewing your plans, testing them, and communicating with the necessary stakeholders about any changes you've made to the plans.

7. Update your plan as needed.

Consider your contingency plan a work in progress. You’ll need to adapt it as new risks arise and to ensure it still makes sense for your business needs. Whenever a new manager or executive joins the team, be sure to share it with them as needed so they know what (if anything) is expected of them.

Contingency Planning Timeline

As planning is always an involved process, you may be wondering how much time you should devote to each step. Let's discuss a timeline below.

Week One: Identify Key Operations

Give yourself about a week to identify the operational areas essential for business function. You likely already know what these areas are, but you want to do enough research to identify them all.

Weeks Two & Three: Brainstorm Scenarios

Take two to three weeks to brainstorm the scenarios you're going to create plans for. Spend as much time as possible speaking to the necessary stakeholders to understand their ideas about the scenarios and how they'd like them dealt with. You'll want to conduct probability assessments and market research to understand if your competitors have ever dealt with something similar. You want to make sure you have all the necessary information before drafting your plan, so this step should be the longest.

Week Four: Draft Plan

Give yourself a week to draft your plans. The first two steps should give you all the information you need, so the third step is simply fine-tuning your research and creating the final plan. You can also share what you've created with your stakeholders and iterate on what you have based on their feedback.

The final step to creating your plan, maintaining and testing, is a continuous effort. As mentioned above, your business will likely be impacted by different things at different times, so it's always important to review plans and ensure they still relate to your needs. For example, maybe you plan to do quarterly reviews and training so new hires, and existing employees, are all on the same page.

Contingency Planning Example

It may be helpful to have an example of a contingency plan, so we'll go over one below. The examples are of a positive and negative situation, so you can get a sense of how a plan applies to both.

Contingency Planning Mistakes to Avoid

Even with the best intentions, your contingency plan may get off to a rocky start. Here are some common mistakes to avoid when creating one of your own.

Not securing executive buy-in first.

Before you can get your team or department onboard, you must get buy-in from the executive team. Otherwise, you risk creating a doomed plan from the start.

Get their feedback on potential risks and other factors that may impact guidelines in the plan. Having executive support from the start ensures the plan put forth is approved and also can motivate those at the department level to buy-in as well.

Failure to cover multiple scenarios.

When assessing potential risks and scenarios, it’s important not to cut corners or slack. Scenario planning is key to your contingency plan’s success. All potential risks should be taken into account. You can rank them by likelihood, but you should by no means leave less likely events out. Otherwise, you leave yourself vulnerable should the event happen.

Think about how many businesses were affected by supply chain issues during the pandemic. Most probably never predicted such a catastrophe, but the ones that had a plan in place for such an obstacle were better prepared.

Set it and forget it.

It’s really easy to get comfortable once your contingency plan is in place — after all, if you did your due diligence from the start, you’re ready to tackle any obstacle thrown your way.

Unfortunately, it’s not a one-and-done process. A contingency plan should be looked at as a living document and updated as needed. Your business needs will change over time and so will its obstacles and risks.

Create Business Contingency Plan

All in all, contingency plans help you prepare for a host of what-if scenarios, whether they happen or not. As you never want to be caught in a challenging situation, being prepared is the best thing you can do to ensure your business continues to succeed, regardless of whatever happens along the way.

As the saying goes, better safe than sorry .

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Use this contingency plan template to communicate risk, prevention, and mitigation measures in your company.

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The Easy Guide to Creating a Business Contingency Plan

Updated on: 2 November 2022

How to avoid disasters? Be prepared for them. 

When things are going well, you often forget to plan for the bad times. But when disaster strikes, you could lose everything in a heartbeat.

An earthquake can bring your whole shop to the ground, your biggest client can choose your competitor over you, your system suddenly can crash making you lose important data etc. There are endless possibilities of disasters if you really think about it. 

That’s why lack of a plan can be a disaster of its own. 

Let’s see why you need a business contingency plan and how to create one in a few simple steps.  

What is a Business Contingency Plan? 

But first, let’s define what a contingency plan is. 

A contingency plan is a proactive strategy that describes the course of actions or steps the management and staff of an organization need to take in response to an event that could happen in the future. It plays a significant role in business continuity , risk management and disaster recovery. 

It helps you stay prepared for unforeseen events and minimize their impact. It also outlines a plan for carrying out the normal business operations after the event has occurred.  

It’s also known in names such as plan B, backup plan, and disaster recovery plan. In case your primary plan doesn’t work, it’s time to execute the plan B.

Benefits of a Contingency Plan 

Without a contingency plan you’re opening yourself to unnecessary risks. Here are some important benefits of a contingency plan that you cannot look away from. 

• Helps react quickly to negative events. As a contingency plan lists the actions that need to be taken, everyone can focus on what to do without wasting time panicking.
• Having a contingency plan in place allows you to minimize damage that could happen from a disaster and minimize the loss of production. For example if you have emergency generators set up, even during a blackout, your team can work seamlessly. 

How to Make a Contingency Plan 

An effective contingency plan is based on good research and brainstorming. Here are the steps you need to follow in a contingency planning process. 

Step 1: List down the key risks

Identify the major events that could have a negative impact on the course of your business and on the key resources, such as employees, machines, IT systems etc. 

Involve other team heads, subject experts, and even outsiders like business consultants to get a deeper understanding of things that may cause problems and jeopardize the direction.

Use a mind map to organize and categorize the information you gather from the brainstorming session with the staff. You can easily share this with everyone in the organization to get their input as well.

Step 2: Prioritize the Risks Based on Their Impact 

Once you have created a list of all the possible risks that could occur in different areas of your business, start prioritizing them based on the threat they pose. 

The risk impact probability chart is a handy tool you can use here. It helps you evaluate and prioritize risks based on the severity of their impact and the probability of them occurring.

Step 3: Create Contingency Plans for Each Event

In this step you’ll create separate plans that outline the actions you need to take in case the risks you identified earlier occur. 

Consider what needs to be done in order to resume normal operations after the impact of  the event. 

Here you’ll need to clarify employee responsibilities, timelines that highlight when things should be done and completed after the event, restoring and communications processes and the steps you need to have taken in advance to prevent losses when the event has taken place (i.e. insurance coverage). 

You can use a visual format here to highlight the course of actions. It would be easier for everyone to comprehend.

Step 4: Share and Maintain the Plan 

Once you have completed the contingency plans , make sure that they are quickly accessible to all employees and stakeholders. 

Review your contingency plans from time to time and update them as needed. And it’s a best practice to inform your employees of the changes as well, as it may include updates to their roles and responsibilities.  

What’s Your Take on Contingency Plans?

That is how you make a detailed contingency plan. List down the major incidents that could harm your business operations, prioritize them based on their impact and probability, create an action plan explaining what you should do in case they occur, and review and update them frequently. 

What is the contingency planning process at your organization? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Businesses need a plan to get back on track when a disaster interrupts daily operations. Contingency plans, also known as “business continuity plans,” “emergency response plans” and “disaster recovery plans” help organizations recover after a disruption.  

Whether they’re preparing for a global outbreak of a deadly virus, crisis management around a data breach or the loss of an important client, contingency plans help organizations bounce back after a negative event.

Companies create many kinds of recovery strategies for everything, from the merger of key competitors to the insolvency of the bank that processes its employee payroll. In India, the government was busy designing a contingency plan as a drier-than-expected monsoon season approached.¹ Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a large bank was preparing a plan b in case a host of new sanctions were levied as the result of a recent geopolitical development.²

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Here are five steps companies use to create effective business contingency plans.

The contingency planning process begins with a risk assessment to gauge the potential impact of each risk. Typically, business leaders and employees conduct risk analysis.

Team members begin with a brainstorming session where they discuss potential risks, courses of action and the company’s overall preparedness. During this stage, it’s important to be clear about the scope of the project and invite all relevant stakeholders to give input. Companies don’t need to create a risk management plan for every threat they face, just the ones deemed highly likely and with the potential to interrupt business operations.

Effective business impact analysis (BIA) is critical to understanding different business functions and how they will react to unexpected events. For example, while a shortage in micro-processors might be devastating to a part of a business that deals with the manufacture of gaming consoles, it likely has little to no impact on the same company’s HR department.

To assess the urgency of creating an action plan for this specific threat, the company would need to know how much of its revenue was being generated from the part of the business threatened by the microprocessor shortage. If gaming consoles are a high percentage of their revenue, they will put a strong plan in place soon.

A well-developed BIA helps stakeholders assess risk and better understand which parts of their business are most critical to daily operations.

After identifying the risks their company faces, determining the likelihood and severity of each risk and conducting a BIA, business leaders can follow a simple, three-step process to build their backup plan.

Identify the triggers that set their plan into action: For example, if a hurricane is approaching, at what point does the approaching storm trigger the contingency plan? When it’s 50 miles away or a 100? They must make clear decisions so the teams they put in charge of execution know when to start their work.

Design an appropriate response: The threat the business prepared for arrives. Teams must know exactly what’s expected of them so the company can recover quickly. Compile clear, accessible instructions, protocols that are easy to follow and a way for everyone to communicate with each other.

Delegate responsibility clearly and fairly: Like any other initiative, contingency planning requires effective project management to succeed. In the case of an existential threat such as a natural disaster, everyone involved in helping the company recover must know their role and be properly trained to perform it.

For example, in the case of a fire, it wouldn’t be fair to expect employees untrained in firefighting to pick up a hose. However, with the right training, they might conduct headcounts or go floor-to-floor to ensure that other employees have evacuated.

One way to improve workflow among teams when designing a plan is to create a RACI chart . RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed and is a widely used process to help teams and individuals delegate responsibility and react to crises in real time.

While it can be hard to justify the importance of putting financial resources into something that might never happen, these past few years have taught us the value of good contingency planning. Think of all the supply chain problems, critical shortages of personal protective equipment and financial havoc wreaked by the pandemic. What would have been different if organizations had had effective contingency plans in place?

Cost and uncertainty are significant barriers when convincing business leaders of the importance of making an investment in contingency planning. Since all costs for contingency plans are estimated—there’s no way of knowing precisely how events will disrupt a business—decision-makers are understandably hesitant.

Different industries have different ways of approaching this problem. In the construction industry, it’s common to set aside 10% of the overall budget of a project for contingencies. Other industries use different methods.

One popular method estimates risks according to a percentage of how likely they are to occur. By this method, if there’s a 25% risk of an event occurring that will result in USD 200,000 in recovery costs, the company must set aside 25%—or USD 50,000—to be in compliance with their contingency plan.

Markets and industries are constantly shifting, so the reality that a contingency plan faces when it is triggered might be different than the one it was created for. For example, after the 9/11 terror attacks, many of the contingency plans that the US government had in place were suddenly irrelevant because they had been prepared decades before.

To avoid a similar disconnect between plans and threats, businesses need to constantly test and reassess the plans they’ve made. For example, IBM’s guidelines mandate that plans should be tested at least once annually and improved upon as necessary. If new risks are discovered and their severity and likelihood is deemed high enough, the old plans might be scrapped altogether.

When businesses are hit with an unexpected disruption, a strong contingency plan gives much-needed structure to the recovery process. Disruptive events cause chaos and decision-makers and employees are often left scrambling to understand what is happening and how best to respond to it. Having a strong plan to turn to can help restore confidence and show the way forward.

Here are a few benefits business leaders who create strong contingency plans can expect:

Businesses that create strong plans recover faster from a disruptive event than businesses that don’t. When a negative event occurs, the faster the business recovers and gets back to business-as-usual, the lower the risk to the company, its customers and its employees.

A good contingency plan minimizes the damage to a company—both reputational and financial. For example, while a data breach will undoubtedly damage a bank’s reputation, as well as its bottom line, how the bank responds will play a critical role in whether its customers decide to continue doing business with it.

Many organizations use a strong contingency plan to show employees and customers that they take preparation seriously. By planning for a wide range of potentially damaging events, business leaders can show investors, customers and workers that they’ve taken the necessary steps to minimize risk.

Many plans focus on natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes or fires. Others deal with data breaches, unexpected network downtime or the loss of a key employee such as a CEO or founder. Here are a few examples of contingency plan templates that deal with broadly different scenarios across a range of industries.

Severity and likelihood of risk: The manufacturers have been following the news in a region where they source specific airplane parts and have deemed the likelihood of disruption there “high.” They initially conduct a search for another supplier but quickly learn that it takes months—even years—to find one. Since the part is necessary for the construction of all their airplanes, they label the severity of this disruption “high” as well.

Trigger: Suppliers make the manufacturer aware that they will soon run out of the needed part due to a disruptive geo-political event in its country of origin.

Response: The manufacturer begins the search for a new supplier of the much-needed part in a more stable country.

Severity and likelihood of risk: The managers of a bank know of a vulnerability in their app that they are working to fix. If the app is hacked and their information systems are compromised, they are likely to lose vital customer data. They rate the likelihood of this event as “high” since, as a financial institution, they are a desirable target.

They also know from watching their competitors face similar situations that the potential for disruption to their business in an event like this is great. They rate the severity of this risk as “high” as well.

Trigger: IT makes the bank’s managers aware that the bank’s app has been hacked and their customers’ data is no longer secure.

Response: The app is immediately shut down and customers are notified that their data has been compromised. They are made aware of the steps that the bank is taking to ensure that they have access to their money and that their personal information is not available to anyone on the dark web. An on-call team of specially trained security experts come in to restore the bank's systems and secure customer information.

Severity and likelihood of risk: The plant’s managers know that severe flooding might spread un-treated water into the city’s streets and public waterways. Both the severity of this risk and its likelihood given the impending storm are deemed “high. ”

Trigger: The hurricane’s path turns toward the city and approaches to less than 100 miles away with wind speeds higher than the threshold rated “safe.” The plant’s contingency plan is put into action.

Response: All necessary workers are recalled to the plant 24/7 and measures are taken to treat as much of the water as possible before the hurricane arrives. According to their plan, whatever is left over will be pumped into holding tanks that are designed to withstand a hurricane. When windspeeds rise to a certain velocity, the plant itself is shut down and all workers evacuated.

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Learn more about the process of disaster recovery planning and Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service.

Discover how global supply chains responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and are developing better ways to balance efficiency and resilience.

See how businesses are leveraging AI and other emerging technologies to maintain business continuity amid disruption and uncertainty.

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1  “ El Nino contingency plan being readied for farmers and output ” (link resides outside ibm.com), Elara Securities Pvt Ltd., 27 April 2023.

2  “ HKMA has prepared contingency plans in case of severe sanctions ” (link resides outside ibm.com), UBS Global Research and Evidence Lab, 5 May 2022.

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How To Create a Business Contingency Plan for the Unexpected

A business contingency plan is a strategy for how your company will respond quickly to disruptive events so it can keep operating.

A plan for the unplannable. It sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s the concept behind a business contingency plan: Preparing for potential risks to your company to ensure as much business continuity as possible, even when the unexpected happens.

Every business faces upheaval, disruption, and unanticipated setbacks, some more surprising or serious than others. No matter the scope of these potential events, you can take steps to protect your company. Here’s what to know about a business contingency plan and how to develop a successful playbook—even if you hope never to use it. 

What is a business contingency plan?

A business contingency plan (or business continuity plan ) is a strategy for how your company will respond quickly to disruptive events and keep operating. A comprehensive plan lays out the steps management, employees, and other stakeholders would take in multiple scenarios to help minimize the impact on day-to-day operations and quickly recover. Minor unexpected events might include a technical failure that leads to a website outage for several hours or an illness sweeping through your customer service team and leaving it shorthanded.

Contingency plan vs. risk management

Contingency planning is related to risk management , though they differ in several important ways. A business contingency plan provides for a tactical response to a specific disruption, and it’s focused on ensuring business continuity while helping the company recover as quickly as possible. By contrast, risk management is a broader and ongoing process: brainstorming all the possible risks to your company, assessing the likelihood of each one, and implementing strategies to reduce or manage the risks. 

Contingency plan examples

Planning for natural disasters is an example of a contingency plan. Say some of your employees are based in the Midwest, and a tornado touches down where three of your workers are based. The same might hold true if a hurricane strikes the Florida coast, where your business has a large office. A designated staffer contacts those affected and confirms they’re safe, but they can’t return to their duties until roads are passable, the power outage ends and Internet service is restored. Management then reassigns any critical operations like order fulfillment to other staffers, who have been trained and prepared for these tasks to ensure business continuity.

5 steps for creating a contingency plan

• Assemble the planning team and brainstorm key risks
• Perform a business impact analysis (BIA)
• Develop response and recovery strategies
• Test the plans and train staffers
• Regularly review new risks and update plans as needed

Here’s a step-by-step guide for developing a contingency plan:

1. Assemble the planning team and brainstorm key risks 

The contingency planning process should include not only management but key personnel: leaders from IT, procurement, human resources, sales, or any other relevant teams. Company-wide representation is an important aspect of any brainstorming session for identifying possible threats because these workers understand details of the organization’s operations and the biggest risks. An open dialogue about business risks is a good way to start to create contingency plans both comprehensive and successful.

2. Perform a business impact analysis (BIA)

Analyzing your business’s normal operations can help you identify the most significant potential threats across the entire organization. Which business functions and systems are most critical? What’s the potential financial, operational, or reputational impact of each specific risk? What’s the worst-case scenario for each aspect of the company’s operations? How could that cascade to other parts of the business? Answering these hypotheticals will help you prioritize and begin shaping mitigation plans.

3. Develop response and recovery strategies

You can now develop a mitigation plan and recovery strategies for each of the scenarios you’ve identified so far. The process will vary depending on the crisis you’re facing, but it could include establishing emergency response procedures, data backup, alternate supplier options, remote work arrangements, natural disaster recovery, and supply-chain crisis management. This process can include designating who’s in charge of crisis communications after an unfavorable event.

4. Test the plans and train staffers

Conduct plan testing through simulation exercises to assess your contingency plan’s strengths and weaknesses and to determine if there is any need for changes, or even a backup plan or Plan B. If the plan is revised, inform key staff and train them in the new protocols. This could include natural disaster and fire drills, mandatory employee training on cybersecurity best practices and crisis response, or cross-training some staffers to perform other duties if needed. 

5. Regularly review new risks and update plans as needed

Because risks evolve, revisit and revise your plan to be better prepared to avoid disasters. Periodically reviewing new risks is an essential step in plan maintenance and includes implementing lessons from internal or external incidents, adjusting for changes in staff and operations, and considering new technology or tools. 

6 types of contingency plans

• Information systems
• Crisis communications
• Health/pandemic
• Supply chain

Contingency plans are unique to each business, but there are several major types of contingency plans, including:

1. Information systems

This is a primary plan for many companies because most organizations depend on computers, data storage, and the internet for daily operations. Risks include system outages, cyberattacks, and data breaches. The contingency plan may cover data backups and recovery, system redundancies, and hacking response procedures.

2. Disasters

These plans often address both smaller-scale disasters and major so-called act-of-God events. Lower-impact possible risks might include incidents like a burst pipe that renders the main office unusable for several days, while high-impact potential risks may be a major natural disaster like a hurricane that destroys an office or ruins warehouse inventory. Mitigation strategies may involve ensuring worker safety, restoring information technology (IT) systems, shifting staffers or critical business functions to other sites, and other steps to get business back to normal as quickly as possible.

3. Financial 

This part of the contingency plan addresses financial events that may be internal to the company or macro external factors. Risks include inevitable periodic economic downturns, which can hurt customer spending power and demand for your products. Other risks may be internal and potentially more damaging, like employee theft of funds or inventory. Each results in financial loss for the company. Contingency plans might include maintaining a minimum cash reserve, tapping a bank line of credit to improve your cash position, or boosting sales with strategies like new revenue streams or adjusted pricing.

4. Crisis communications 

This portion revolves around clear internal and external communication in times of crisis. Risks include a lack of internal alignment on messaging, confusion among employees about the company’s response or their part in it, and negative external attention or press coverage that harms your brand or reputation. This plan should include processes for clear communication channels to staffers and external stakeholders, training and briefing of designated spokespeople, and establishing a chain of command to manage messaging and keep important parties up to date on the crisis as it evolves.

5. Health/pandemic

The sudden spread of COVID-19 spurred most companies to develop plans for managing a pandemic or other health crisis. Measures could include employee safety protocols, rules for entering the workplace, communication with stakeholders, and shoring up remote-work support and technology.

6. Supply chain 

Your company’s ability to produce products and services may depend on access to materials or suppliers. If so, risks include disruptions like raw materials shortages, supplier failures, and trade restrictions. Mitigation plans may involve securing backup suppliers, tracking logistics challenges in the market, and maintaining an emergency supply of inventory or materials.

Business contingency plans FAQ

Why does a business need a contingency plan.

Every business faces upheaval, disruption and unexpected setbacks. Preparing for these events with a contingency plan can help the entire team work together to stay calm, execute the plan, and ensure as much business continuity as possible.

What’s the difference between contingency planning and crisis management?

These concepts are related but not the same. Contingency planning is about a proactive strategy: developing a plan for coping with potential disruptions or crises in the future. Crisis management, by contrast, is reactive and in the moment: the actions taken in response to an event, which often includes implementing steps in the contingency plan, if one exists.

How do I avoid contingency planning pitfalls?

Businesses can take a few steps to avoid pitfalls in contingency planning: involve key stakeholders inside and outside the business to develop the plan; prioritize risks based on likelihood and impact on the business; test the plan and revise it as needed; conduct periodic, comprehensive risk assessments; and train employees and make the lines of communication clear in case of crisis.

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5 Steps to Create a Contingency Plan for Your Business

Posted may 4, 2022 by sabrina parsons.

Any business that survived the pandemic had to adjust, readjust, and rethink their business as they dealt with shutdowns, supply chain issues, and ever-changing customer behavior. At the time, it could be seen as crisis or recovery planning . However, intentionally or not, these businesses were proactively creating contingency plans.

What is a business contingency plan?

A business contingency plan is an established strategy or backup plan designed to help organizations respond to possible future events. This contingency planning process encourages you to consider business and financial strategies for potential risks well in advance. It’s basically a lean business plan that takes into account unexpected scenarios that could affect your business. 

Doing so ensures that you aren’t caught off guard. Instead, when a negative event occurs, you can jump right into successfully navigating your business. A contingency plan can even address larger potential issues such as a natural disaster, a global pandemic, or a major security breach. 

Your contingency plan will want to address and cover:

Financial scenarios

Financial “what if” scenarios are based on the contingency you are planning for. The important part is to include your projected Profit and Loss statements as well as your Cash Flow Forecast. Adjust these financial statements around a potential issue to better understand what course of action you’ll need to take.

Are there increased costs of goods and services or do you need to change your pricing? Should you add a fuel surcharge if the contingency involves higher gas prices? 

Strategy adjustments

Understanding the financial effects is the first step. Next, you’ll need to address how you will adjust your business and marketing strategy to navigate the contingency, you are planning for. This is when you go from risk management to creating a plan that helps your business thrive rather than recover.

What changes will you need to make to your staffing, advertising, and marketing budgets? Will you need to change how you sell, market, and support your products and services to address the adverse events? 

Why is a contingency plan necessary?

By putting together a contingency plan and addressing risks to your business, you will be prepared and able to best address those risks when and if they happen. The last few years have taught all small business owners that we have no idea what is ahead. That the best possible way to plan for the future is to be ready for anything. 

A contingency plan for your business will help you step through the what-if scenarios that you might encounter. To start putting together solid plans that will help you overcome risks, fast-track disaster recovery, and even ensure there’s business continuity in place. 

What if gas prices double, and your run a delivery business? A contingency plan could help you model the financial scenario, make sure you have the right access to credit lines to pay for the increased costs, and plan for the right gas surcharge to add to your customer deliveries. 

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How to create a contingency plan for your business

Writing a contingency plan doesn’t have to be a huge or stressful ordeal. All you are doing is taking your lean business plan, and making some adjustments to the strategy and the strategic forecast to plan for uncertainty. Here’s a step-by-step guide to write your own contingency plan.

1. Identify and list the risks

In the past few years, all business owners have experienced risks they never saw coming. Trying to account for everything can be overwhelming and time-consuming. Rather than anticipating anything that could happen to your business, focus on the next few years. 

Start with a comprehensive list, putting everything down that could possibly happen to your business in the next 12-24 months. Loss of an employee, a dip in sales, equipment failure, rising shipping costs, insurance increases, etc. Depending on your business, it may also be beneficial to consider larger unforeseen risks such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and economic downturns.

We can all look back at the beginning of the pandemic and learn from the events. Use that knowledge to think about potential future risks and build your list.  

2. Prioritize key risks

Now that you have all those frightening potentials listed, it’s time to prioritize. You need to think about your key risks. The ones that are most likely to happen or will cause the greatest hardship to your business. Realistically you should prioritize no more than 3-5 key risks. 

Remember, you can always use these initial contingency plans to help you explore additional risks. More than likely, several risks will have similar effects on your business functions. It’s much easier to adapt your contingency plans once you have them rather than starting fresh every single time. 

3. Outline contingency plans for each risk

Now that you’ve done the prep work, it’s time to jump into developing your plan. Take your prioritized list and focus on building contingency plans that outline how you and your business will tackle each risk. Here is what you should include in your contingency plan:

Financial forecasts for each risk

To truly understand how a specific risk impacts your business operations, you’ll need a full financial forecast . This will account for what the risk will do to your revenue, expenses, or both. Having a clear picture of your potential financial situation will help you answer questions such as:

• Will you have enough cash to address the risk? 
• How does the risk affect your ability to collect cash, and pay your bills?
• Are there any obvious costs that you can minimize or cut? 
• Do you need to consider expanding a credit line or applying for a loan?

Don’t worry about creating these forecasts from scratch. Instead, start with your current financial forecasts, make a copy, and adjust projections based on what you expect to happen. Be sure to take note of what adjustments you make. This will make it far easier to update your forecast scenarios whenever you bring in more recent real-world performance data for your business. 

Looking for a better solution? Learn how you can save more time and ensure greater accuracy when adjusting to actual performance using LivePlan .  

The one-page plan

With your forecasts in place, you can begin to define the actions you will take. Keep things simple and easy to follow by creating a one-page strategic plan for each risk. In it, you’ll address how the effects of each risk will impact your operations, sales, marketing, milestones, and even funding needs. This will help you answer questions such as:

• What strategies in marketing and sales have to be changed or adjusted? 
• Do you have to hire new people? 
• Do you need to reduce costs and expenses to survive the risk? 
• What are the roles and responsibilities required to address the risk?

Document your 12-24 month road map and the key changes you need to implement to keep your business healthy. Keep it lean and actionable to ensure that you and your team will actually be able to use it when the time comes. The LivePlan Pitch page is a perfect place to outline your one-page strategy. 

4. Connect them to your overall business plan

You’ve considered the risks. You have contingency plans in place that include financial forecast scenarios and a one-page action plan. It’s now time to connect your contingency plans to your overall business strategy and business plan. 

Ideally, you should have a simple, lean business plan that is helping guide your business over the next 12-36 months. If not, take 30-minutes to develop one based on your current expectations for your business. This will make it far easier to update and use when facing the risks you’ve identified.

Take this business contingency plan example for instance. If your unexpected event is about a financial risk (such as a dip in sales), connect that contingency plan with your financial plan as a potential fork in the road. You can easily do this same exercise with the two to three more contingency plans you have already built out. 

The end goal is to make this quick and painless so that you can spend less time planning and more time acting when a crisis you’ve planned for occurs. 

Think of it like attachments for a tractor. Where you have all of the right buckets and tools to get your yard in tip-top shape. You’re prepared to jump right in and take on everything from mowing and digging to laying down new gravel. All you need to do is add the right attachments ahead of time. That’s exactly how you want your contingency plans to function with your current plan. 

5. Share, review and revise

Once you have integrated the contingency plans into your overall business plan, it’s time to get your team on board. You want to be sure that they understand the ins and outs of your business plan, and how each contingency should be executed when the time comes. 

So how do you get your team on board? Try these three simple steps:

• Share the plan with the contingency plans integrated into the appropriate places. 
• Invite team members to a meeting where you can present the business plan, the potential unexpected events your business might have to face, and the contingency plans that outline how you navigate around them. 
• Set the expectation with the team for regular, monthly review meetings. This is where you can review business health, compare actual results to the planned results and assess the need to implement a contingency plan.

You can check out our guide on how to conduct a monthly plan review meeting for a more thorough explanation of how to set up this process. 

Preparation is everything

The hard work is done. You have thought about potential hurdles your business might face and you have a plan. Your team is engaged and you now have a regular review schedule in place to keep your business on track. 

All you have to do now is implement your lean business plan, watch for obstacles, and be ready to use your contingency plans if needed. Don’t worry, your regular review meetings will help you track your actual results against your plan and will give you an opportunity to revise your plan if need be.  Check out how LivePlan can help simplify this process and help you make better business decisions in any scenario.

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A practical guide to creating a contingency plan

The vast majority of failed projects and bankrupt companies had a plan and followed it. So why do these projects and companies end up failing?

Unexpected things happen that companies don’t plan for, and many fail to adapt in time.

The key: having a sound contingency plan. A contingency plan is all about expecting the unexpected and preparing to deal with worst-case scenarios ahead of time. This article will cover why you need a contingency plan, and walk you through step-by-step instructions for creating one. We’ll also provide a contingency planning template you can implement and use on monday.com immediately.

What is a contingency plan?

A contingency plan is a predefined set of actions that you will implement in response to specific future events that put your project or business at risk.

A simple example of a contingency plan is to back up all your website data. That way, if your website gets hacked, it will be easy to restore the data after regaining access and changing passwords.

Without that backup, the team might have to recreate the entire website from memory or build a website from scratch . That’s a significant expense and can mean several extra days (or weeks!) of downtime.

A contingency plan is about managing and lowering risk and setting yourself up for speedy disaster recovery.

What are the two types of contingencies in project management?

There are two types of contingencies that you should plan for: budget contingency & schedule contingency.

• Budget contingency is an additional amount of money that you allocate to your budget, so you can cover extra costs that might come up as the project progresses. If you don’t have a contingency budget, you might run into an unexpected cost that could send you over budget and risk the profit margin of your project.
• Schedule contingency is an additional amount of time that you bake into your project schedule, to allow for any unexpected delays or hiccups in your project progress. Without schedule contingency, you risk running over your project deadlines and disappointing stakeholders.

Contingency plan examples

Here are a few examples of how contingency planning could help save the day, no matter what happens:

Project contingency plan

Imagine that a key team member unexpectedly leaves the project. If you were contingency planning for this scenario, you might outline the following steps you could follow if you lost a key project team member:

• Identify who will take over the tasks of the departing team member, and what tasks still need doing
• Assess if any additional resources will be needed (such as an additional part-time project member from another team)
• Provide training sessions for other team members to ensure they can step in effectively
• Notify any stakeholders about the change and how it will be managed to minimize disruption and offer reassurance.

Business continuity plan

How about if a natural disaster disrupted operations at your primary office location? Could your business cope? With a continuity plan in place, you’ll turn things around quickly:

• Make sure all your employees have access to the necessary tools and systems so that they can work remotely if necessary
• Regularly back up all essential data to the cloud, and have a data recovery plan in place, in the event of loss of the hardware in your primary office
• Identify backup office space or plan for remote work options if the primary location becomes inaccessible
• Define communication channels that you’ll use in the event of a major disruption so that you can reach your employees to provide updates and instructions on how to proceed

Supply chain contingency plan

Do all your logistics depend on a few key suppliers? Then you should have a supply chain contingency plan in place, in case of unexpected production or shipping delays.

• Have more than one supplier for critical components, so this becomes less of a business risk.
• Maintain a buffer stock of your essential components, so that production won’t be held up by supplier delays
• Find a shipping company that offers expedited shipping options in case you have an urgent need
• Update your supplier contract to include penalties for delays and a procedure for resolving any disputes

Why contingency planning is important

Murphy’s Law specifies that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And any experienced project planner knows how true that is! Contingency planning can make or break your business:

It helps mitigate risk.

Contingency planning helps to identify potential risks and get ahead of them with a proactive plan. That way, even when things go wrong, you can minimize the disruption to operations and reduce your financial losses.

It makes your business more resilient.

Having a contingency plan in place enables you to respond to the unforeseen more effectively, adapt to changing conditions, and recover from setbacks more efficiently.

It keeps you compliant.

In many industries, contingency planning is mandated by regulatory requirements, so you’ll need these plans in place to avoid penalties and maintain good legal standing.

It increases customer trust.

Customers trust businesses that handle disruptions effectively. The ability to respond quickly and effectively when things go wrong will help build your reputation for great customer service.

Looking for a tool to make contingency planning easier? With monday.com, you can store all your contingency plans in a central location, communicate changes with stakeholders, and create automated workflows in response to unexpected events.

What are the characteristics of a good contingency plan?

Your contingency plan should include the following components:

List of risks

Begin by making a thorough identification of potential risks that could realistically occur. Depending on what kind of contingency plan you’re putting together, these could be all the risks that could impact your business, or the risks that could delay or disrupt a specific project or product.

For example, in terms of business-level contingency planning, you could list out:

• Natural disasters
• Technological failures
• Economic downturns
• Supply chain disruptions
• Sudden market changes

Response options

Your plan should then outline various responses that you could choose between, for each risk you’ve identified. These might be:

• Actions to mitigate the risk
• Ways to transfer the risk to another party (e.g. by buying insurance)
• Ways to accept and manage the risk

Plan of action

For each risk and response option, you should then add in a plan of action, including:

• Steps to take
• Who is responsible for each step
• Any resources you’ll need
• Any need to coordinate with other stakeholders or third parties

Communication management protocols

You’ll also want to make sure that you have a plan in place to communicate effectively with all stakeholders, including:

• Who needs to be notified
• The channels you’ll use for communication
• How often you’ll send out updates
• Any useful templates to use for messages

Trigger points

Decide in advance when you’ll activate a specific contingency response. For instance, you might have a particular threshold beyond which you’ll move to a contingency plan — such as the severity level of a natural disaster. You should also define who has the authority to make these decisions, and how the decision will be made (by committee or by chain of command, for instance.)

Testing and review

To keep your plan up to date, you should schedule regular tests and reviews. For instance, for a natural disaster contingency plan, you might want to run a drill once a year, to practice your response procedures and make sure that everything works as it should.

How to create a contingency plan

Let’s cover the basic contingency planning process and detail how to get yours up and running.

1. Map out essential processes.

What processes are essential to your business and safely delivering your product or service to customers?

If you’re a manufacturing company that ships directly to consumers, a simplified process list might look something like this:

• Getting raw materials from suppliers
• Manufacturing process
• Freight and shipping
• Packaging and warehousing
• Last-mile delivery

Looking at this list, you can see how vulnerable it is to natural disasters or even minor human errors.

Create an overview of every crucial process in your organization.

2. Create a list of risks for each process.

Once the process list is created, consider what might disrupt business continuity.

What can go wrong with each of these critical processes?

Let’s look at an example of what could go wrong with “last-mile delivery” …

• The driver can deliver single or multiple packages to the wrong address.
• The package can be damaged during delivery.
• The package could get lost at a distribution center.
• A truck full of packages could be involved in an accident.
• A flood could cripple the road system in a specific area.
• The driver could get delayed because a moose wants to lick salt splatter off the car (seriously, it’s a thing ).

And that’s only a preliminary list. Once you start thinking about it, you’ll realize how many things you rely on to avoid going wrong, even for fundamental processes.

Every business process is vulnerable to some sort of emergency or human error and requires a solid risk management process .

3. Evaluate the potential impact and likelihood of each risk.

Once the risks are identified, it’s essential to determine how they could impact your business.

Are they likely to happen? How large will the impact on your business if they do occur?

Most companies use “qualitative risk assessment” to do this.

PMI uses the following risk exposure assessment table — also called the probability impact matrix — to evaluate … the probability and impact of potential risks.

( Image Source )

First, rate the severity of the impact on a scale from 1–100. Then, multiply with a percentage based on how likely it is to occur.

4. Calculate costs and contingency reserves, and identify issues to mitigate.

The quantitative risk assessment approach is less common — but more practical — to assess the potential cost of each risk.

How much would each risk potentially cost your business? To get a better overview, add these 4 columns to the risk register template :

• Full potential loss from the event
• Expected loss from the event
• Cost of response (post-event)
• Cost of mitigation (pre-event)

This means you can make an educated decision when budgeting contingency reserves into project plans and yearly budgets.

During the risk analysis , estimate the potential costs of the adverse event.

EXAMPLE: if your online store goes down, multiply the average online sales revenue per hour with expected downtime. Make one pessimistic and one realistic estimate.

Your hosting service may also have a flat fee for restoring sites, which would be your response cost. If these costs are unreasonably high and the event is likely, estimate the costs of a mitigation effort. In this case, it could be a firewall and extra procedures, like 2-factor authentication, an important security system , for all employees.

Budget in those costs. An accurate budget is the first part of emergency response and prevention. Without enough cash, your team won’t be able to put any response plans into action.

5. Create a response plan for prioritized events.

Create a response plan for events by exploring the following questions:

• What can be done ahead of time to minimize any adverse effects on the event? For example, backing up data, carrying extra stock, or having more employees on call.
• What can be done immediately after the event to minimize the impact? For example, ordering more from a secondary supplier, rerouting another vehicle, or bringing in on-call staff.

The specifics depend on your company’s unique processes and situation.

6. Share the contingency plan.

A contingency plan only works if it’s used when things go wrong—and that means that everyone in your organization knows to reach for the plan in times of trouble. To make sure that happens:

• Identify who needs to be aware of and involved in contingency planning.
• Choose appropriate communication methods for each stakeholder group. For instance, department heads may need specific meetings to focus on their section of the plan. Key employees might need a training session.
• Create the plan in an accessible, centralized location, such as a monday.com board. That way, everyone involved can access the plan, and you can keep it updated at all times.
• Encourage feedback on the plan, such as running an employee survey to check understanding and seek ideas for changes and improvements.
• Post reminders and updates on your shared internal communication channels.

7. Monitor and review the contingency plan.

If you want your contingency plans to protect your business, you have to keep them up to date. That means you’ll need to schedule regular reviews of the plan to check that it’s still relevant and aligned with your changing business.

Remember to communicate updates or revisions to all relevant stakeholders, and provide opportunities for additional training if needed.

Manage your contingency planning process with monday.com

Having your business contingency plan on paper is an excellent place to start. But it won’t translate to how your entire company will tackle a crisis.

That’s where monday.com comes in. Our flexible digital workspace gives you everything necessary to ensure everyone follows the contingency plan when they need to.

Use our pre-built contingency plan template to get you started 

Make sure that no employee is left clueless during a crisis. Our contingency plan template has everything you need to start the planning process.

With our pre-built template, you can feel confident you’re following best practice contingency planning, so your business will run smoothly even in the case of unexpected events.

Use integrations to notify someone of an event automatically 

With monday.com’s powerful integrations and automations, you can respond to unfavorable events more quickly.

For example, you can immediately create and assign a work item whenever a customer submits a bug report.

This approach helps avoid another potential problem: customer service failing to report bug reports to your development team.

Monitor project status at all times in dashboards to avoid bottlenecks and domino effects.

The best time to start acting is before a catastrophic event that puts your entire project or business at risk.

To do that, your management team needs a clear understanding of the project’s status at all times.

Use the 30,000-foot view every manager needs to avoid predictable project delays and failures and check that project controls are working properly.

Contingency plans are a must-have.

When starting a project or business, most people plan according to the status quo. Unfortunately, that’s a best-case scenario and not helpful in the real world.

A contingency plan helps you prepare for worst-case scenarios and keep your project afloat, should anything go wrong.

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Free Contingency Plan Templates

By Joe Weller | March 25, 2021 (updated April 24, 2023)

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Contingency plans offer organizations a proactive strategy for resuming daily functions and operations following unforeseen events. We’ve compiled the most useful contingency plan templates and tips on using them for various industries.

On this page, you'll find free contingency plan templates, including a simple contingency plan template , a software contingency plan template , a business contingency plan template , and a project management contingency plan template . Plus, learn how to use a contingency plan template .

Simple Contingency Plan Template

Use this simple contingency plan template to help your organization return to daily operations after unforeseen circumstances. Find sections for business impact analysis (BIA), recovery strategies, plan development, and testing and exercises. By completing these areas, you can stress-test your contingency plan. Assign contingency plan tasks to team members. Share the document with stakeholders to keep everyone apprised of the organization’s fail-safe contingency plan. 

Download a Simple Contingency Plan Template for  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Smartsheet | Google Docs

For more resources on emergency response and contingency planning, see “ Free Risk Management Plan Templates .”

Simple Contingency Plan Presentation Template

Use this simple contingency plan presentation template to highlight the details of your contingency plan to your team members and other stakeholders. Slides include details for business impact analysis (BIA), recovery strategies, contingency plan development, and plan testing and exercises. It also includes a comprehensive version history slide including your presentation plan’s version, approved by, revision date, descriptions of changes, author, prepared by, and approved by sections. Keep everyone in the loop with this easy-to-use contingency plan presentation template. 

Download a Simple Contingency Plan Template for PowerPoint

To learn more, read this comprehensive guide on contingency planning.

Software Contingency Plan Template

Use this software contingency plan template to identify, describe, and categorize risks, create an impact level and impact description, and create a contingency plan for each, in order to mitigate risks. For each risk, the template also includes a Trigger Points column (e.g., “What triggers the contingency scenario?”) and End Plan Trigger column (e.g., “What triggers the end of the contingency plan?”), so that team members understand the need for the contingency plan. Software project managers can use this template to create contingency plans related to data security, user privacy, geographically discrete data centers, or apply it to software development and software testing. 

Download a Software Contingency Plan Template for  Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets   

Read this guide to contingency planning to find tips for improving your contingency preparedness.

Information Technology (IT) Service Contingency Plan Template

This easy-to-fill template focuses on keeping IT operations up and running in the event of a disruption. Use this template to document details of the scope, recovery objectives, recovery team, recovery strategy, and return-to-plan strategy of your IT department’s contingency plan. Be fully prepared for any incidents that cause downtime by using the proactive steps in this all-inclusive IT service continuity planning template. 

Download an Information Technology (IT) Service Contingency Plan Template for  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Google Docs | Smartsheet

IT Service Contingency Plan Presentation Template

This easy-to-use information technology (IT) contingency plan presentation template is the perfect solution for presenting your IT contingency plan to key stakeholders. Slides include scope (service area, service offerings, and service areas that depend on the service at risk), recovery objectives (recovery time objectives, RTO; and recovery point objective, RPO), recovery team (service / role / function, responsibility, dependencies, and expected response time), and recovery strategy (initial recovery and overall recovery strategy). Easily gain buy-in from team members, management and other stakeholders with the all-in-one, IT-specific solution for outlining and refining your IT department’s service contingency plan.  

Download an Information Technology (IT) Service Contingency Plan Template for  PowerPoint | Google Slides | Smartsheet

Business Contingency Plan Template

Keep tabs on your organization’s comprehensive business contingency plan (BCP) with this distinctive business contingency plan template. It guides you through your business function recovery priorities, relocation strategy, alternate business site, recovery plan, recovery phase, records and backup details, restoration plan, recovery teams, and recovery procedures. This BCP template is useful for determining accurate planning and courses of action to ensure the success of your business’s contingency plan. 

Download a Business Contingency Plan Template for  Microsoft Word | Google Docs | PowerPoint | Adobe PDF | Smartsheet

Business Contingency Framework Template

This one-page template features a broad-strokes framework for performing a business impact analysis (BIA), along with working out your recovery strategy, plan development, and testing and exercises. You’re never far from the big-picture vision of your business contingency plan with this efficient one-page business contingency framework template, available in Microsoft Word, PDF, Google Docs and Slides, and presentation-friendly PowerPoint formats. 

Download a Business Contingency Framework Template for  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Google Docs | Google Slides | PowerPoint

For more resources on business contingency planning, see “ Free Business Continuity Plan Templates .”

Project Management Contingency Plan Template

This project management contingency plan template is ideal for creating a comprehensive contingency plan for any type of project. The template enables you to create a high-level executive summary of your project’s contingency plan, including risk evaluation, a synopsis of your risk-prevention mitigation strategies process, and roles and responsibilities. Use this template to define risks and their events or triggers, consider budgetary implications, and define your potential plans of action. 

Download a Project Management Contingency Plan Template for  Excel | Google Sheets  

Visit our article on contingency planning in project management for more information.

Small Business Contingency Plan Template

It’s critical for small businesses to have a comprehensive contingency plan that team members can reference in the event of a debilitating event or emergency. Designed specifically for small businesses, this template uses a pre-built, all-inclusive contingency plan to provide guidance for modestly sized organizations. Take the guesswork out of creating a contingency plan from scratch, and leverage the advantages of this small-business-specific template. 

Download a Small Business Contingency Plan Template for  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Google Docs

For more resources on emergency response and contingency planning, check out our roundup of disaster recovery plan templates .

Contingency Plan Checklist Template

This two-part, fully customizable contingency plan checklist template contains a pre-built contingency plan checklist based on disaster-recovery steps, and a step-by-step, linear recovery procedure section. Use the latter section to ensure that everyone is aware of your contingency plan, if there is an event or occurrence that triggers the need to implement your plan. Then, use the checklist section to ensure that all steps in your contingency plan are in place, should you need to execute your contingency plan. 

Download a Contingency Plan Checklist Template for  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Google Docs

What Is a Contingency Plan Template?

A contingency plan template provides a step-by-step process to communicate actionable items in the event of a disaster or disruption. The document takes the guesswork out of emergency planning, so you can protect resources, minimize interruptions, and identify go-to team contacts. 

You can begin the contingency planning process by completing a contingency plan template so that you’re adequately prepared. By recording accurate and thorough information to ready yourself for an emergency, you can determine your priorities, relocation strategy, and recovery plan details. A contingency plan also helps you plan your organization’s recovery phases, work to ensure records backup, create a restoration plan, establish a recovery team, and assign roles to key individuals.

When to Use a Contingency Plan

You should use a contingency plan if there is the risk of an unexpected event that could impact your project’s success. A contingency plan is a backup plan that outlines steps for you to take in case the original plan encounters unforeseen obstacles. 

The following provides a list of typical scenarios where you should use a contingency plan: 

• Risky or Uncertain Situations: When there are potential risks or uncertainties that could impact the success of your project, it's a good idea to have a contingency plan in place to mitigate those risks. 
• Time-Sensitive Projects: When you have a tight deadline or critical timeline that you must meet, a contingency plan can help ensure that your project is completed on time, even if unexpected issues arise. 
• Resource Limitations: When you have resource constraints, such as budget or personnel, a contingency plan can help you effectively allocate resources. 
• Emergency Situations: When emergencies (e.g., natural disasters, pandemics, or other crises) can impact your ability to complete your project, a contingency plan can help you and your organization respond quickly and efficiently. 

Overall, you should use a contingency plan whenever there is a potential risk or uncertainty that could impact the success of your project or goal, or when there is the possibility of emergencies. When unexpected events occur, it's always better to be proactively prepared by having a plan in place, instead of scrambling to come up with a solution.

Sections of a Contingency Plan Template: 

While your contingency plan will vary to meet the needs of your project, below are the common elements of a contingency plan:

• Recovery Priorities: Enter contingency plan priorities, including recovering essential operations and restoring critical functions. 
• Relocation Strategy: Add the relocation strategy when your contingency plan requires moving your primary services. 
• Alternate Site: Document alternate site details when you determine the secondary site where you can continue operations. 
• Recovery Plan: Enter the step-by-step recovery-plan details to get your organization operational again. 
• Disaster Occurrence: Use this phase to identify what constitutes a disaster that requires your organization to activate the contingency plan. 
• Plan Activation: In this phase, your organization puts your contingency plan into effect, which continues until your organization secures an alternate site and can relocate operations.
• Alternate Site Operation: Operations continue at the secondary facility until you can restore them at the original site. 
• Transition to Primary Site: The organization prepares to move operations back to the original site.
• Records Backup: Enter contingency plan details about how you’ll back up records and make them accessible in the event of a disaster or disruption. 
• Restoration Plan: Add your plan for ensuring that all operations, records, etc., are able to be operational in the event of a facility disruption or disaster. 
• Recovery Teams: List the recovery team(s) and members. Assign contingency plan tasks based on job role and title. 
• Recovery Procedures: Enter details of specific activities or tasks required to adequately recover normal and critical operations. 

Additionally, a contingency plan template enables you to track changes to your plan through a section for version history, comprising the following data: 

• Version: Enter the unique version number for the most up-to-date iteration of the plan. 
• Approved By: Ensure that department heads or other stakeholders have approved the contingency plan. 
• Revision Date: Provide the date when a substantial revision was made to your contingency plan. 
• Description of Change: List details of the change(s) made to the plan. 
• Author: Record the name of the plan’s primary author.

How to Create a Contingency Plan 

When creating a contingency plan, be proactive, thorough, and adaptable. By anticipating potential risks and developing a well-documented plan of action, organizations can minimize the negative impact of unexpected events and ensure continuity of critical functions and key services.

Here are some key steps to follow when creating a contingency plan:  

• Identify Potential Risks: First, identify potential risks or unexpected events that could impact the success of your project. Brainstorm with stakeholders and team members to identify as many potential risks as possible. 
• Assess the Impact: Once you have identified potential risks, assess each risk’s potential impact. This will help you prioritize risks and determine which ones require immediate attention. 
• Develop Response Strategies: Based on your impact assessment, develop response strategies for each potential risk. This may involve developing alternative solutions or workarounds, identifying additional resources, or establishing clear communication protocols. 
• Assign Responsibilities: Determine who will be responsible for executing the contingency plan if and when it is necessary. Assign specific roles and responsibilities to stakeholders or team members to ensure that everyone knows what they’ll need to do. 
• Establish Communication Protocols: Establish clear communication protocols so that team members and stakeholders know how to report potential risks or unexpected events and receive updates on the status of the contingency plan. 
• Test and Refine Your Plan: Test the contingency plan periodically to ensure that it works effectively. Make adjustments as needed. 
• Document Your Plan: Document the contingency plan in a clear and concise manner and make it easily accessible to all relevant parties. 

Keep in mind that a contingency plan is only effective if you regularly review and update it to reflect changing circumstances and new risks that may arise.

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An overview of business contingency plans

Reading time: about 3 min

Natural disasters, data hacking, theft—your organization has likely prepared for major catastrophes.

Less significant events can also be majorly disruptive—say your biggest customer suddenly switching to a competitor or your entire sales staff getting food poisoning at their annual retreat.

Many circumstances have the potential to disrupt, or worse, shut down your business. A business contingency plan can save the day. Follow the steps below to develop a business contingency plan that will help you stay prepared for the worst.

What is a contingency plan?

A contingency plan is a roadmap created by management to help an organization respond to an event that may or may not happen in the future—whether it’s a large-scale event like a natural disaster or a small-scale roadblock like employee theft.

The purpose of a business contingency plan is to maintain business continuity during and after a disruptive event. A contingency plan can also help organizations recover from disasters, manage risk, avoid negative publicity, and handle employee injuries.

By developing a contingency plan, your business can react faster to unexpected events. The faster your organization is able to get back up and running, the less impact you'll see on profits and revenue.

How to write a contingency plan

There are many factors to consider when building a contingency plan. These four steps are a good place to start preparing for the unexpected.

1. Identify the risks

Before you can prepare for a disaster, you need to understand what types of disasters you’re preparing for. Think about all the possible risks to your organization, including natural disasters, sudden changes to revenue or personnel, or security threats.

2. Prioritize the risks

Make sure you spend your time and resources preparing for events that have a high chance of occurring as you write and develop your contingency plan. For example, you may have listed earthquakes as a possible risk. However, if your area doesn't experience many earthquakes, you wouldn’t want to spend all your time preparing for this event. If your area is prone to flooding, you should spend more of your resources preparing for floods.

To determine which risks are more likely to occur, use a risk impact scale . This will help you to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur and determine where to focus your efforts.

3. Develop contingency plans

Once you’ve created a prioritized list, it’s time to put together a plan to mitigate those risks. As you write a contingency plan, it should include visuals or a step-by-step guide that outlines what to do once the event has happened and how to keep your business running. Include a list of everyone, both inside and outside of the organization, who needs to be contacted should the event occur, along with up-to-date contact information.

You can also create a list of ways to minimize the risk of these events now and start acting on it. 

4. Maintain the plan

Maintenance of your contingency plan is arguably the most important part of the process because it’s where the work happens to ensure you’re always ready.

Review your plan frequently. Personnel, operational, and technological changes can make the plan inefficient, which means you may need to make some changes.  

You’ll want to communicate the plan to everyone who could potentially be affected and clearly define what everyone's roles and responsibilities will be during a time of crisis. 

Buniness contingency plan example

To help you prepare for the unexpected, get started with these business contingency plan examples below. 

Ready to get started? Business contingency plans help you prepare your organization to handle anything unexpected. Give your employees a realistic plan for how they should handle any problem that arises. 

Learn the 5 steps to an effective risk management process.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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What is a contingency plan & how to develop one.

Vivian Tejeda

ClickUp Contributor

July 13, 2023

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In business, the only constant is inconsistency. 

Whether it’s natural disasters, cybersecurity breaches, or supply chain disruptions, unexpected events can strike at any time. And this isn’t simply alarmist talk—obviously, business risks can pop up anywhere, but you can avoid so much with a general backup plan.  

It’s why developing a contingency plan is essential for every organization. However, it takes knowing what to include, how to create proactive measures, and how to have this plan ready at any time so you maintain normal operations.

And that’s where this guide comes in. 💪

Let’s walk through the process of contingency planning to help your team navigate unforeseen challenges with confidence. Here’s how to start safeguarding your business against the unpredictable.

What is a Contingency Plan?

Benefits of having a contingency plan, how to create a business contingency plan: a step-by-step guide, elements of a contingency plan, contingency plan examples, get your team prepared with a contingency plan.

A contingency plan is a proactive strategy designed to help businesses prepare for potential risks and disruptions. It outlines the necessary steps to lower potential damage, ensure your business operations continue, and that an organization can recover from its biggest risks or unexpected adverse situations.

Business contingency plans understand the key risks that could derail an entire project or business continuity. Typically, contingency planning relies on business impact analysis to determine the biggest risks and potential setbacks . This allows companies to proactively create a backup option from an original plan.

From weather-related disasters to data breaches, contingency planning makes all the difference when the unexpected occurs. There are plenty of reasons to create contingency plans—for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons.

Here are some of the benefits of contingency planning you might not realize:

1. It keeps damage and losses in check

Having a solid contingency plan means you’re ready to tackle whatever curveballs life throws at your business. And the best part? It minimizes the impact these surprises can have on your business. For example, it could be financial, operational, or reputational risk management to keep damage and losses to a minimum.

With detailed contingency plans in place, you set yourself up to stay strong, no matter what.

2. It allows companies to keep business as usual—even when it’s not

A lot of businesses operate on the model that everything runs perfectly—minus a few hiccups here and there. But how do organizations plan around unpredictable disasters from weather or other emergencies that could break your supply chain?

You could panic—or have some relief knowing the contingency plans you created have a detailed backup plan to maintain business continuity—so everything remains running smoothly. Contingency planning allows you to adapt to whatever comes your way and keep serving your customers with minimal interruption.

Now that’s what you call stability.

3. It helps businesses bounce back in no time

Let’s be real—the faster you recover from an unexpected event, the better. Your contingency planning process helps you identify what you need to do to get back on track ASAP.

The result? You save time and resources and avoid any extra headaches that might come from a prolonged disruption—including losing that customer base you’ve worked so hard to grow. 

4. It makes it easier to win over customers and keep them

Here’s the thing—your customers and key stakeholders want to know you’ve got their backs. When you’ve got a business contingency plan at the ready, you show customers you’re serious about maintaining top-notch service and reliability. 

It’s a rock-solid way to build trust, foster customer loyalty, and show that your business operates no matter the situation—so you can focus solely on what matters most.

Ready to build your own contingency plans? Follow these seven steps to ensure your business is prepared for the unexpected. 

1. Assemble a contingency planning team

Gather a diverse group of employees and stakeholders who understand your business and provide valuable insights into potential risks and solutions. 

This team should include representatives from different departments and levels of responsibility, ensuring a well-rounded perspective. Remember, a diverse team spots potential blind spots better and brings creative problem-solving ideas to the table.

2. Leave no stone unturned

Identify possible disruptions—natural disasters, cybersecurity breaches, personnel issues, or other hazards—and assess their potential impact on your business. Take a deep dive into your operations and consider both internal and external threats. 

Consult with your team and external experts if needed, and create a comprehensive list of risks that could affect your business continuity.

3. Tackle the biggest fish first

Rank the identified risks according to their potential consequences and the likelihood of them actually happening. Focus on high-impact, high-probability events for your contingency plan.

This prioritization process will help you allocate resources effectively and ensure you’re tackling the most critical threats first. Remember, it’s essential to strike a balance between addressing immediate threats and preparing for longer-term risks.

4. Plan for action—not a reaction

For each risk, create a detailed plan outlining the steps your business will take to mitigate the threat and minimize its impact. These response strategies should be clear, actionable, and tailored to the specific risk at hand . 

Better yet, don’t start from scratch. ClickUp provides a done-for-you contingency template that you can fill in and share with your whole team. As you continue to flesh out your contingency plan, consider both short-term and long-term solutions, and make sure your plan is flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances. The more specific your action plans , the better prepared your team will be.

5. Establish communication and keep the lines open

Determine how the information will be shared and establish guidelines for coordinating response efforts among team members and stakeholders. This might involve setting up dedicated communication channels, designating points of contact, or implementing a centralized reporting system. 

It might even be worth adding it to your onboarding process for employees. The goal is to ensure that everyone involved in executing the contingency plan is on the same page.

6. Train employees and raise awareness

Educate your employees about the risks you’ve identified and make sure they’re familiar with the contingency plan. Conduct regular training sessions and drills to keep everyone prepared. 

Make sure your team understands their role in the plan and is equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to execute their responsibilities. Who is doing what? What are the expectations?

An informed and well-trained team is your strongest asset in navigating unexpected challenges.

7. Regularly review and update the contingency plan: Stay ahead of the curve

Stay proactive by periodically reviewing your contingency plan and making necessary updates based on changes in your business environment, new risks, or lessons learned from past incidents . 

Schedule routine check-ins to reassess potential risks, evaluate the effectiveness of your response strategies, and make any necessary adjustments. A contingency plan is a living document—keep it fresh and relevant to stay prepared for whatever comes your way.

Creating comprehensive contingency plans takes several crucial elements—think of them as the building blocks for a solid foundation of preparedness. Let’s explore each of these components in detail:

Risk assessment and identification: Know your threats

First things first, you need to dive deep into your business processes and identify potential threats that could disrupt your operations. 

Consider everything from natural occurring disasters and cyberattacks to personnel changes and to issues with supply chains. Once you’ve compiled a list of risks, assess their potential impact on your business to determine the severity of each threat.

Risk management is all about knowing the likelihood of anything and everything that could pause your operations. Here are some common reasons for developing contingency plans :

• Natural disaster recovery (e.g., floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes)
• Pandemics or widespread health crises
• Supply chain disruptions or shortages
• Cybersecurity breaches or data theft
• Technological failures or system outages
• Regulatory changes or legal issues
• Economic downturns or market fluctuations
• Competitor actions or industry shifts
• Workplace accidents or safety incidents
• Acts of terrorism or civil unrest
• Damage to facilities or equipment (e.g., fires, vandalism)
• Intellectual property disputes or theft
• Loss of major clients or contracts
• Reputation-damaging events (e.g., product recalls, public relations crises)
• Environmental hazards or accidents (e.g., chemical spills, pollution incidents)

Try the ClickUp Risk Assessment Whiteboard Template to collaboratively plan around all of the potential issues that could harm your operations. A visual whiteboard allows everyone to participate and clearly see the risks and strategies to address them in one space. Now, your contingency plan will look better than ever.

Prioritization of risks: Focus on what matters most

Not all risks are created equal. To make the most of your contingency planning efforts, prioritize risks based on their likelihood as well as what their consequences could be. 

Focus on addressing high-impact, high-probability events first, then work your way down the list to make sure you’re tackling the most critical threats head-on to have a solid Plan B.

The ClickUp Prioritization Matrix Template aids in prioritizing tasks and projects based on their impact on users and the effort required to implement them. It’s a useful tool for assessing operational workflows and improvements, with prioritization made easy using the 3×3 matrix.

Response strategies and action plans: Be proactive—not reactive

For each identified risk, develop a clear and actionable plan outlining the steps your business will take to minimize the threat and its impact. 

Remember, it’s essential to be proactive rather than reactive—having well-defined response strategies in place will help you act swiftly and decisively when faced with unexpected challenges.

For IT teams, contingency plans must include how you’ll address any cybersecurity threats. The ClickUp Cybersecurity Action Plan Template helps IT departments add crucial details to a contingency plan.

Communication and coordination: Keep everyone in the loop

Here’s an important note to keep in mind: A contingency plan is only effective if everyone involved knows about it and understands their role. 

Outline how information will be shared during an emergency, and establish protocols for coordinating efforts among team members and stakeholders. For example, HR software with clear communication and seamless coordination features can be vital for a successful response to any crisis.

If you need help setting up your internal or external communication process during a crisis, the ClickUp Communication Plan Template is a must. This template provides simple steps to build an effective communication plan with easily customizable sections throughout the Doc so your contingency plan is as thorough as possible.

Training and awareness: Empower your team

Educate your employees about potential risks and the contingency plan itself. 

Run regular training sessions and drills to make sure everyone is familiar with their responsibilities and prepared to act when the time comes. An informed and well-trained team is your strongest asset when navigating unexpected challenges.

Get a head-start with the ClickUp Company Process and Procedures Template to easily document and organize your contingency planning guide for the organization. This template will give you the bones of a solid plan to get employee buy-in and knowledge of what to specifically do if circumstances change.

Plan maintenance and updates: Keep it fresh and relevant

Lastly, don’t let your contingency plan collect dust. Regularly review and revise it as needed to make sure it remains up-to-date and aligned with your current business environment. 

Schedule periodic check-ins to assess potential risks, evaluate the effectiveness of your response strategies, and make any necessary adjustments. A contingency plan is a living document—keep it fresh and relevant to stay prepared for whatever comes your way. 🚀

Don’t make planning any more difficult than it has to—use the ClickUp Business Continuity Plan Template and rest assured you’ve included everything. Add reassessment plans to go back and edit contingency plans based on new threats or risk you could encounter and review each year.

Toyota’s Swift Response to the 2011 Tsunami

In 2011 a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, causing widespread destruction and significantly impacting businesses across the country. Toyota, a global leader in the automotive industry, was no exception. Supply chains suffered massive disruptions due to damaged infrastructure and affected suppliers.

However, Toyota’s business contingency plan played a crucial role in minimizing the impact of the disaster on the company. They already discovered the possible risks associated with natural disasters and put measures in place to address them with a solid backup plan.

The company’s business continuity planning played a huge role in quickly bouncing back. Here are some of the best examples of their plan: 

Shifting production to alternative locations

Toyota’s “plan B” included an emergency response process to shift production to other facilities. When the tsunami struck, Toyota quickly relocated some manufacturing operations to unaffected plants, both within Japan and overseas.

These types of proactive measures helped maintain production levels and ensured that the company could continue to meet customer demands during the crisis.

Tapping into alternative suppliers

The event also affected many suppliers that Toyota relied on for parts and materials. To minimize the impact on supply chains, the company leveraged its extensive network of global suppliers, turning to alternative sources to procure the necessary components. 

This diversification strategy allowed Toyota to maintain its production schedules and minimize late deliveries of customer vehicles. 

Implementing recovery efforts

In the aftermath of the crisis, Toyota swiftly mobilized its resources to support recovery efforts. They worked closely with affected suppliers to help them restore their operations, provided financial assistance, and shared their expertise in disaster recovery. 

By getting ahead of “what ifs”, Toyota demonstrated the power of effective contingency planning in the event of a major disaster.

Remember, a good offense is the best defense. That’s why contingency planning pushes you to be proactive in managing risks . By identifying potential threats and addressing them before they escalate—and keeping your plan updated—you’ll always be ready to respond effectively. It’s like having a secret weapon in your back pocket.

Whether you use one of ClickUp’s templates or create something from scratch, a contingency plan is about so much more than just preparing for the unexpected. It’s about minimizing damage, ensuring business continuity, bouncing back quickly, building trust, and being proactive.

Use ClickUp as your central space for communication, planning, and organizing essential documents. Additionally, you can rely on Whiteboards to collaboratively organize your response plans.

When you put it all together with ClickUp, you’ve got a recipe for a resilient, agile, and successful organization that takes on anything life throws its way. Give ClickUp a try today for free !

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How To Implement a Business Contingency Plan

A business contingency plan is an essential tool to ensure business continuity in case of an emergency.

What Is a Business Contingency Plan?

How to develop a contingency plan for your business, examples of business contingency plans, ip telephony as a support solution.

In a business environment where unpredictable situations can negatively affect the functioning of a company, it is important to have a solid contingency plan. Whether it's external factors like natural disasters or internal and external emergencies, a business contingency plan is essential to act in an orderly manner and minimize damage as much as possible. In this article, we will explore the importance of a well-established contingency plan and how to implement it within a company. We will also present examples of companies that have successfully faced crisis situations thanks to their contingency plan.

A contingency plan in a company is a set of measures and actions prepared in advance to deal with emergency situations, crises, or unexpected events that could interrupt or negatively affect the normal operations of the company. The main objective is to ensure business continuity and minimize negative impacts in case of an unfavorable situation. It must be personalized and adapted to the specific needs and characteristics of each company. It generally includes measures for crisis management, the protection of assets and resources, the safety of personnel and information, as well as internal and external communication. It is also crucial to regularly test and update the plan to ensure its effectiveness and adapt it to changes in the business environment. Having a contingency plan allows companies to be ready to face unforeseen situations, minimize risks, and ensure the continuity of operations, which helps maintain customer trust, reduce losses, and recover more quickly from any incident.

Ringover Tip 🔥

Having a multichannel communication software like Ringover ensures you can get in touch with employees and clients across channels so your contingency plan can be successfully executed.

Developing a contingency plan requires a structured and detailed approach to identify possible crisis scenarios, define effective responses, and prepare the team to react quickly in adverse situations. Here is a step-by-step guide to developing a contingency plan:

1. Identify Potential Threats ✅

Conduct a risk analysis to identify possible emergency situations that could impact your business, such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, supply chain issues, etc.

2. Assess the Impacts ✅

Determine how these threats could affect operations, employees, customers, and the company's reputation. Set priorities based on the severity of the impacts.

3. Define Objectives and Strategies ✅

Establish clear objectives for the contingency plan, such as ensuring personnel safety, preserving company assets, and minimizing operational disruption. Define strategies to achieve these objectives.

4. Create a Crisis Team ✅

Designate a multidisciplinary team trained and ready to act in case of an emergency. Assign roles and responsibilities to each team member.

5. Develop the Action Plan ✅

Detail the specific actions to follow for each identified crisis scenario. Include communication procedures, security protocols, necessary resources, and execution timelines.

6. Establish a Communication System ✅

Set up an internal and external communication system that allows for quickly and accurately informing employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders during a crisis.

7. Training and Simulations ✅

Organize regular training sessions with the crisis team to ensure they are ready to react in an emergency situation. Conduct crisis simulations to test the contingency plan.

8. Review and Update ✅

Regularly review and update the contingency plan to incorporate new risks, organizational changes, or lessons learned from previous incidents.

Reach Clients and Employees Easily Thanks to Ringover

The VoIP software provides multichannel communication capability so you can always get in touch with who you need to.

Below, we have compiled examples of contingency measures to be taken in various scenarios:

Prolonged Power Outage ⚡

• Description: A power outage lasting several hours or days can disrupt a company's operations, especially if it heavily relies on electricity.
• Impact: Halted production, loss of unsaved data, disruption of internal and external communication, and reduced ability to serve customers.
• Contingency Plan: Implement backup generators, have a data backup plan in place, and establish procedures to maintain communication with employees and customers during the outage.

Cyberattack 🔒

• Description: A cyberattack, such as a ransomware attack, can compromise a company's IT systems, blocking access to critical data and potentially stealing confidential information.
• Impact: Data loss, operational interruptions, damage to the company's reputation, and potential legal and financial liabilities.
• Contingency Plan: Implement robust security systems, conduct regular data backups, have a cybersecurity incident response team, and a communication plan to inform affected parties.

An IP telephony solution for businesses, such as Ringover, can help you implement a contingency plan due to its ability to ensure communication continuity during unforeseen situations. Here are some benefits:

• Mobility and Remote Access: Ringover allows employees to connect and make calls from anywhere with internet access. In case of a contingency requiring remote work, communication remains uninterrupted.
• Scalability and Flexibility: IP telephony solutions are easily scalable, allowing for the addition or removal of lines as needed.
• Redundancy and Resilience: Operates on multiple devices (computers, smartphones, tablets) and networks, offering several access points for communication.
• Integration with Other Tools: Can integrate with CRMs , collaboration tools, and other software, facilitating process continuity and access to information.
• Centralized Management and Real-Time Monitoring: Provides centralized dashboards and real-time monitoring capabilities.
• Cost Reduction: Generally offers lower costs compared to traditional systems, especially for international calls.
• Call Recording: Useful for keeping detailed records during an emergency, ensuring that all important communications are documented.

In summary, a communication system like Ringover is essential for a contingency plan, ensuring that communication remains smooth and effective under any circumstances. Try it for free and discover why smooth communication is crucial for any business at every stage of its development.

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• The cloud-based multi-channel communication platform Ringover enhances productivity and ensures personalized, efficient exchanges with clients and candidates. Plus, there is a large library of integrations to connect your CRM system with our recruiting software so it’s all accessible on a single, simple interface.
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• Cadence by Ringover, a sales prospecting solution , supports efficient business development via multichannel outreach, automation, and actionable insights.

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What Is Contingency Planning? Creating a Contingency Plan

Table of Contents

What is contingency planning, what is a contingency plan, contingency plan example, how to create a contingency plan, business contingency plans, project contingency plans.

Contingency plans are used by smart managers who are aware that there are always risks that can sideline any project or business. Without having a contingency plan in place, your organization won’t be well prepared for risk management .

The term contingency planning refers to the process of preparing a plan to respond to any risks or unexpected events that might affect an organization. Contingency planning starts with a thorough risk assessment to identify any risks and then develop a contingency plan to resolve them or at least mitigate their negative impact.

Contingency planning takes many shapes as it’s used for helping businesses and projects across industries. Even governments use contingency plans to prepare for disaster recovery or economic disruption, such as those caused by natural disasters.

A contingency plan is an action plan that’s meant to help organizations mitigate the negative effects of risks. In simple terms, a contingency plan is an action plan that organizations should execute when things don’t go as expected.

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Action Plan Template

Use this free Action Plan Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

Now that we’ve briefly defined what contingency planning is, let’s take a look at a contingency plan example involving a manufacturing project.

Let’s imagine a business that’s planning to manufacture a batch of products for an important client. Both parties have signed a contract that requires the manufacturer to deliver the products at a certain date or there may be negative consequences as stated on the purchase agreement. To avoid this, the business leaders of this manufacturing company start building a contingency plan.

To keep this project contingency plan example simple, let’s focus on three key risks this company should prepare for.

• Supply chain shortages: The supply chain is one of the most important business processes for this manufacturing company. Therefore, one of the most impactful risks is a raw material shortage which may occur if their main supplier is unable to deliver the materials they need on time. To prepare a contingency action for this risk, the business owners decide to reach out to other suppliers and place standing purchase orders which give them the opportunity to ask for a certain quantity of materials at some point in the future. If the risk of a supply chain shortage occurs, they’ll have multiple sources of raw materials available in case their main supplier can’t keep up with their demand levels.
• Machinery breakdown: Another risk that might halt production is the malfunction of machinery. To prepare for this, business leaders hire extra maintenance personnel and order spare parts for their production line machinery as part of their contingency plan. If the risk of machinery breakdown becomes a reality, the organization will have the labor and resources that are needed to mitigate it.
• The team is not meeting the schedule: If the manufacturing team members are failing to meet their goals on time for whatever reason, the manufacturing business will need to allocate more resources such as extra labor and equipment to complete the work faster. However, this contingency action will generate additional costs and reduce the profitability of the project.

ProjectManager has everything you need to build contingency plans to ensure your organization can respond effectively to risks. Use multiple planning tools such as Gantt charts, kanban boards and project calendars to assign work to your team and collaborate in real time. Plus, dashboards and reports let you track progress, costs and timelines. Get started today for free.

Like a project plan , a contingency plan requires a great deal of research and brainstorming. And like any good plan, there are steps to take to make sure you’re doing it right.

1. Identify Key Business Processes and Resources

To create an effective contingency plan you should first identify what are the key processes and resources that allow your organization to reach its business goals. This will help you understand what risks could be the most impactful to your organization. Research your company and list its crucial processes such as supply chain management or production planning as well as key resources, such as teams, tools, facilities, etc., then prioritize that list from most important to least important.

2. Identify the Risks

Now, identify all the risks that might affect your organization based on the processes and resources you’ve previously identified. Figure out where you’re vulnerable by brainstorming with employees, executives and stakeholders to get a full picture of what events could compromise your key business processes and resources; hire an outside consultant, if necessary. Once you’ve identified all the risks, you should use a risk log to track them later.

3. Analyze Risks Using a Risk Matrix

Once you’ve identified all the risks that might affect your processes and resources, you’ll need to establish the likelihood and level of impact for each of those risks by using a risk assessment matrix . This allows you to determine which risks should be prioritized.

4. Think About Risk Mitigation Strategies

Now, write a risk mitigation strategy for each risk that you identified in the above steps. Start with the risks that have a higher probability and higher impact, as those are the most critical to your business. As time permits you can create a plan for everything on your list.

5. Draft a Contingency Plan

Contingency plans should be simple and easy to understand for the different members of your audience, such as employees, executives and any other internal stakeholder. The main goal of a contingency plan is to ensure your team members know how to proceed if project risks occur so they can resume normal business operations.

6. Share the Plan

When you’ve written the contingency plan and it’s been approved, the next step is to ensure everyone in the organization has a copy. A contingency plan, no matter how thorough, isn’t effective if it hasn’t been properly communicated .

7. Revisit the Plan

A contingency plan isn’t chiseled in stone. It must be revisited, revised and maintained to reflect changes to the organization. As new employees, technologies and resources enter the picture, the contingency plan must be updated to handle them.

Contingency Plan Template

We’ve created an action plan template for Excel to help you as you go through the contingency planning process. With this template, you can list down tasks, resources, costs, due dates among other important details of your contingency plan.

A business contingency plan is an action plan that is used to respond to future events that might or might not affect a company in the future. In most cases, a contingency plan is devised to respond to a negative event that can tarnish a company’s reputation or even its business continuity. However, there are positive contingency plans, such as what to do if the organization receives an unexpected sum of money or other project resources .

The contingency plan is a proactive strategy, different from a risk response plan , which is more of a reaction to a risk event. A business contingency plan is set up to account for those disruptive events, so you’re prepared if and when they arrive.

While any organization is going to plan for its product or service to work successfully in the marketplace, that marketplace is anything but stable. That’s why every company needs a business contingency plan to be ready for both positive and negative risk management.

In project management, contingency planning is often part of risk management. Any project manager knows that a project plan is only an outline. Sometimes, unexpected changes and risks cause projects to extend beyond those lines. The more a manager can prepare for those risks, the more effective his project will be.

But risk management isn’t the same as contingency planning. Risk management is a project management knowledge area that consists of a set of tools and techniques that are used by project managers to create a risk management plan.

A risk management plan is a comprehensive document that covers everything about identifying, assessing, avoiding and mitigating risks.

On the other hand, a contingency plan is about developing risk management strategies to take when an actual issue occurs, similar to a risk response plan. Creating a contingency plan in project management can be as simple as asking, “What if…?” and then outlining the steps to your plan as you answer that question.

Using ProjectManager to Create a Contingency Plan

ProjectManager has the project planning and risk management tools you need to make a reliable contingency plan that can quickly be executed in a dire situation.

Use Task Lists to Outline the Elements

Use our task list feature to outline all the elements of a contingency plan. Since a contingency plan likely wouldn’t have any hard deadlines at first, this is a good way to list all the necessary tasks and resources. You can add comments and files to each task, so everyone will know what to do when the time comes.

Reference Dashboards to Monitor the Contingency Plan

Our dashboard gives you a bird’s eye view of all of the critical project metrics. It displays live data so you’re getting a real-time look at how your project is progressing. This live information can help you spot issues and resolve them to make sure that your contingency plan is a success. Which, given that it’s your plan B, is tantamount.

If you’re planning a project, include a contingency plan, and if you’re working on a contingency plan then have the right tools to get it done right. ProjectManager is online project management software that helps you create a shareable contingency plan, and then, if you need to, execute it, track its progress and make certain to resolve whatever problems it’s addressing. You can do this all in real time! What are you waiting for? Check out ProjectManager with this free 30-day trial today!

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How to Develop a Business Contingency Plan

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Plan A in the business world is essentially the same for every company on any given day: Keep doing what works well to increase revenue and customer satisfaction.

Unexpected business disruptions such as natural disasters, technology failures, and even the COVID-19 pandemic, however, are inevitable. That’s why a business contingency plan -- your Plan B -- is essential to minimize the impact of these events on day-to-day operations.

Overview: What is a contingency plan?

A business contingency plan identifies a variety of catastrophic events that could occur and formulates responses to mitigate their effects.

These situations, as with the examples above, are typically beyond your control, so the best you can do is determine your optimal course of action when time is of the essence to protect your business.

The business contingency plan is much like project risk management but on a larger scale. Instead of anticipating and managing risk at the team or department level, the business contingency plan is applicable across large swaths, if not all, of your company.

What to consider when developing a contingency plan

Input from all levels within your organization, everyone from senior-level executives to front-line workers, is critical when developing a business contingency plan as part of your change management efforts.

In addition, because extreme events are inevitable without being predictable, how quickly you recover from these situations will be one of your key business metrics.

You also need to keep the three considerations below in mind to shape an effective business contingency plan.

1. Financial solvency

When a crisis happens, the number one priority is the continued operation of the company, which ultimately boils down to cash flow and solvency. This requires thinking proactively about your cash reserves, liquid assets, and bottom-line numbers to keep the lights on and doors open.

2. Customer loyalty

After making sure your company can survive the financial impact of a catastrophic event, the next issue is customer loyalty. While everyone knows the unexpected can and will happen, your customers demand that you respond quickly and transparently.

Anything less than that can lead to a damaged reputation and customer defection to your competitors.

3. Negative and positive events

Being ready to deal with negative events like a natural disaster is a common contingency plan example, but you also need to be prepared when unexpected good fortune comes your way.

If a marketing initiative goes viral and leads to a spike in orders, which could strain your supply chain and production capabilities, you must have a plan for that too.

How to write a contingency plan

As part of your business development efforts, contingency planning is also a form of gap analysis. You will not only be identifying potential threats and their relative likelihood, but you’ll also be determining how prepared you are now versus where you need to be to ensure operations continue with the minimum amount of interruption.

Step 1: List potential threats

The first step in compiling the information necessary to flesh out a contingency plan template is to identify all the potential threats your company faces. In general, these can be broken out into three categories: natural disasters, human-caused events, and technology failures.

Tips for listing potential threats:

To determine the maximum number of potential threats, you’ll need to cast a wide net by soliciting input from multiple departments and personnel within your organization as well as other stakeholders. In addition, business consultants, who have a perspective beyond that of the company itself, can offer valuable insights.

• Collect quantitative and qualitative information: Surveys will generate quantitative information such as statistics about perceived potential threats, while one-on-one interviews employing open-ended questions will provide more subjective, qualitative information.
• Use a visual threat chart: Organizing potential threats visually by way of diagrams or mind maps will also aid the subsequent contingency planning steps beyond the use of text or lists alone.

A visual threat chart will help categorize the different types of crises that could impact business operations. Image source: Author

Step 2: Prioritize potential threats

Once you’ve identified all potential threats, everything from a power outage to the eruption of a volcano to a cyberattack, you’ll need to prioritize each threat based on its general likelihood. After all, if you’re located on a coastline, flooding will be more likely than the dust storm that might be a routine occurrence in an arid region.

Tips for prioritizing potential threats:

You’ll want to use a uniform "instrument" -- that is, a consistent method -- to analyze the potential impact of different disasters based on the information you collected in step one. Otherwise, you could end up with an ever-moving target that will make your resource allocation less effective.

• Calculate risk in multiple areas: “Risk” is a broad term, so when it comes to calculating the relative threat from different events, break the impact out into categories including physical resources, human resources, company reputation, and legal/regulatory liabilities.
• Use a threat matrix: Much like a prioritization matrix, a threat matrix will help you visualize which potential events deserve more attention by calculating whether the threat’s impact is high or low and if it is more or less likely to occur.

A threat matrix allows you to plot multiple threats to determine which ones warrant higher priority. Image source: Author

Step 3: Formulate threat responses

Now you are ready to lay out your responses to various threats. Critical elements to determine your standard operating procedure for each scenario include personnel responsibilities, equipment, cost, offsite contacts and service providers, and recovery timeline.

Tips for formulating threat responses:

Your threat responses must be detailed enough to provide clear guidance during a crisis. At the same time, they cannot be so granular that they don’t allow the flexibility necessary to respond quickly as chaotic events unfold.

• Test each response plan: Most contingency plans fail due to inadequate testing. Just as you need fire drills so everyone knows how to get out of a building, each plan needs regularly scheduled dry runs to time how long it takes, identify any weaknesses, and revise as necessary.
• Identify proactive measures: After determining what needs to be done to resume operations after an unexpected event, work backward to see what you can do before it occurs. If you’re worried about losing power, for example, consider adding backup generators or using a more robust data backup protocol to prevent unnecessary losses.

Step 4: Communicate the contingency plan

Once each contingency plan has been tested and approved, it must be easily available to all employees and stakeholders. After all, it won’t do any good gathering dust in a three-ring binder on the top shelf in a locked storeroom.

Tips for communicating the contingency plan:

As with other planning documents, including financial, strategic, and succession, your contingency plans are living documents, not museum pieces, and must be treated as such.

• Perform regular reviews: By scheduling periodic reviews on at least an annual basis, employee knowledge of procedures will be reinforced. In addition, they can provide input for ongoing updates.
• Use online/mobile applications: In addition to having hard copy plans, make this information available online and through mobile applications. That way, people can respond appropriately even if they are offsite or are at a remote business location.

Common pitfalls to avoid when creating a contingency plan

Successful contingency planning deals with the same issues as all other project planning: avoiding silos, updating results, and disseminating information.

1. Lack of input

Contingency planning cannot be left to one department or, even more problematically, to one person due to the scope of processes, money, and personnel involved in recovery efforts.

You should use a cross-functional team to obtain actionable input from a variety of organizational perspectives.

2. Lack of current information

In addition, your contingency management plan is not a static document because it presents your best options and responses at a single point in time.

As your business evolves, personnel change and different resources and capabilities become available, you’ll need to regularly revisit the contingency planning process to reflect these changes.

3. Lack of communication

The best contingency planning in the world won’t do you any good if nobody knows about this key piece of business intelligence or how to access it in the middle of an emergency.

Make sure everyone knows how to find this information, their respective roles to play, and how to reach and remain in contact with other members of your disaster response teams.

Start on your business contingency plan today

Strictly speaking, developing your business contingency strategy is not a front-line, day-to-day operations activity. At the same time, a lack of planning for the worst things that could happen threatens the very existence of your company.

That’s why you need to maximize your efforts and be as efficient as possible by using, for example, the best project management software to work both smart and hard.

We're firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent, a Motley Fool service, does not cover all offers on the market. The Ascent has a dedicated team of editors and analysts focused on personal finance, and they follow the same set of publishing standards and editorial integrity while maintaining professional separation from the analysts and editors on other Motley Fool brands.

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What Is a Business Contingency Plan?

Small Business Contingency Plans Explained

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A business contingency plan is a course of action that will be taken if an unexpected event occurs that could disrupt the business. It's a backup plan that ensures the business can continue to operate despite an adverse event.

A business contingency plan is a “plan B” or blueprint for how to keep your business running in the event of a natural disaster, major technical issue, or other unforeseen disruption. A contingency plan identifies potential risks to your business and outlines steps your management team and employees can take if confronted with one of those risks. It helps protect the health and safety of your workers after an event has occurred, while also minimizing business interruptions that can result in financial losses. A well-thought-out plan can mean the difference between staying in business and shutting down.

• Alternate term : Continuity plan

Do You Need a Business Contingency Plan?

Every business should have a contingency plan so it can resume its operations as soon as possible after a disruptive event occurs. 

A plan will save you time and money since you've already decided what resources you need and actions to take to keep your business going. It can also alleviate some of the stress you're likely to feel when disaster strikes. 

Rather than fretting about what you should do, you can simply follow the steps you've laid out ahead of time.

How to Create a Business Contingency Plan

The first step in creating a contingency plan is to determine what risks are most likely to impact your business and the functions they will impact. Think about how your business normally operates and the types of events that could disrupt its major activities. Your risks depend on the nature of your business and your geographical location. For instance, hurricanes and earthquakes are risks in some areas but not others. Here are examples of events that could cause disruptions:

• Physical damage by fire, windstorm, or other peril to a building that your business occupies
• Damage to machinery or breakdown of equipment
• An extended utility outage (electricity, water, gas, or telecommunications)
• Resignation or extended absence of key employees
• Damage to your computer system or a data breach
• Interruption of your supply chain
• Blocked access to your business location

Some of these events could also have legal implications. For example, all 50 states, along with D.C. and U.S. territories, have laws requiring businesses to notify individuals whose personally identifiable information has been stolen or released in a data breach.

Run an Impact Analysis

The next step is to conduct a business impact analysis so you can predict the potential outcomes of a disruption of one of your business functions or processes. An analysis can help you estimate the operational and financial impacts of a disruption. It can also help you gather the information you will need to develop recovery strategies. Here are examples of the potential operational and financial impact from the disruption of business functions and processes:

• Lost or delayed sales or income
• Increased expenses, such as overtime, outsourcing, and expediting costs
• Regulatory fines
• Contractual penalties or loss of contractual bonuses
• Customer dissatisfaction or defection
• Delay of new business plans  

When estimating the impact of events, be sure to consider timing and duration. 

A hurricane, structure fire, or data breach may have a greater effect on your income or costs if it occurs during your busy season than when business is normally slow. Likewise, a disruption that lasts for a day will have less impact than one that extends for a week or a month.

You can use the results of your impact analysis to rank your risks in order of priority. Risks with the greatest potential impact should be listed first.

One of the easiest ways to write a contingency plan is to use a template, which is provided by several state and local websites including, for example, the one for Cambridge, Massachusetts .

Plan for Continuity

Once you've analyzed your risks and estimated their impacts, you can begin writing your contingency plan. You'll need a plan for each of the risks you've identified. For example, suppose your manufacturing business is highly dependent on a grinding machine. If the machine became inoperable due to physical damage or a malfunction, your business might have to shut down temporarily. You draft a contingency plan outlining steps you will follow if your machine becomes unusable. Your plan, in turn, might include contact information for two companies that rent machines similar to yours.

When writing your contingency plan, be sure to identify specific people who will need to take action. For instance, suppose your firm employs a highly-skilled salesperson named Susan, who generates 50% of your firm's sales. If Susan left your firm or was unable to work for an extended period, your sales would plummet. You know a retired salesperson (Jim) who could step in for Susan temporarily. However, before you include Jim in your plan, you should explain the roles and responsibilities you'd expect him to fulfill and obtain his consent.

Once you've completed your contingency plan, be sure to share it with your managers and staff who will be responsible for implementing it. Ask them for their feedback, as they may think of a potential risk or impact you didn't consider.

Contingency Plan Example

Here's an example of how a company might use a contingency plan.

Tom owns Tasty Treats, a manufacturer of frozen prepared meals. The firm generates 60% of its revenue from sales of frozen pizza, all of which is made at a central location. Tom worries that his business could be severely impacted if a catastrophe occurs at the pizza manufacturing facility and he's forced to shut it down. Tom thinks his biggest risks are fire, windstorm, equipment breakdown, and an extended power outage, and that all have a high probability of occurring. He drafts a detailed contingency plan. Here are the highlights.

Ready.gov. " Business Impact Analysis ." Accessed Jan. 28, 2021. 

National Conference of State Legislatures. " Security Breach Notification Laws ." Accessed Jan. 28, 2021. 

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Contingency plan template

Developing a contingency plan is the best way to ensure your business is safe from risk if something out of the norm occurs. Luckily, creating a contingency plan template can help you establish a backup plan quickly and easily.

Sign up to create your own template.

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Planning for future business initiatives should include crafting a backup plan in the event something doesn’t go as planned. With a contingency plan template, your team can quickly establish and launch a backup strategy in the event that a roadblock occurs.

What is a contingency plan template?

What is a contingency plan.

A contingency plan is a strategy you create for your team or business in the event that something disrupts regular business operations. Think of a contingency plan as the “Plan B” for regular business operations—it’s the plan that you create to keep things running even if something prevents your business from operating normally.

What’s the difference between a business contingency plan and a business continuity plan?

While they sound similar, contingency plans and continuity plans are two separate strategies put in place to help keep a business running. Teams create a contingency in advance of a disruption to prepare for potential future issues. Contingency plans often require an incident to meet certain criteria before the plan is enacted. A contingency plan is only enacted if a scenario meets a certain criteria. When teams develop the contingency plan, they also develop the criteria a situation needs to meet before that plan is executed. 

A continuity plan is a solution that’s put in place during an incident to help keep the business running. While a contingency plan requires that a situation meets certain requirements before it is enacted, a continuity plan does not. This means that your team can start implementing a continuity plan as soon as something starts to go awry.

Why use a contingency plan template?

Using a contingency plan template provides you with a few different benefits.

Ensure every plan has the relevant information: When you use a contingency plan template to develop your strategy, you’ll have key elements, such as a scenario criteria, and the strategy needed to keep the business running. This ensures that every plan will have all of the information the team needs to enact the plan.

Standardize formatting : When all contingency plans are organized in a similar manner, team members will know exactly where to find the information they need when they need to enact a contingency plan. In times of crisis, people sometimes don’t think clearly. Having information organized in a similar manner helps take the cognitive work away from finding the information you need.

Simplify plan creation : When you create a contingency plan template in a digital work management platform like Asana, you can create full contingency plans quickly and easily. Simply duplicate the template and then add in the relevant information to that specific plan.

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Custom fields . Custom fields are the best way to tag, sort, and filter work. Create unique custom fields for any information you need to track—from priority and status to email or phone number. Use custom fields to sort and schedule your to-dos so you know what to work on first. Plus, share custom fields across tasks and projects to ensure consistency across your organization. 

Messaging . Need to share information that isn’t actionable? Try Messages in Asana. Messages enable you to communicate within Asana about non-actionable work. You can send messages to any combination of individuals, teams, and projects, so everyone is on the same page. Link to tasks, projects, and Goals in Asana to make it easy for your message recipients to gain context and drill down into the details.

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The best way to write a contingency plan is to start with a contingency plan template. A contingency plan template outlines all of the major components of a contingency plan. With the template, all you need to do is fill in key information relevant to the specific contingency plan for your current situation.

What are the benefits of contingency planning?

Contingency planning minimizes the amount of risk your business may experience if a disruption occurs. Use a contingency plan template to create multiple plans for different situations, so your business will always be prepared.

What are the 9 steps of contingency planning?

There are nine key steps to contingency planning . The first step is to make a list of major potential risks. From there, weigh those risks based on both severity and likelihood of the risk happening. Here you can identify important risks that could affect operations, and analyze what impact they may have on your business. Then, you can use a contingency plan template to develop your full plan for the biggest risk, gain approval from superiors, distribute plans to relevant teams, and create new plans if needed.

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Home » Business » Free Contingency Plan Templates (Excel / Word / PDF)

Free Contingency Plan Templates (Excel / Word / PDF)

A contingency plan template is always a part of good strategies in case the original plan backfires. In some cases, you require a contingency plan example when the original plan may not be as successful as you expect.

Table of Contents

What is a contingency plan?

A contingency plan is the step taken by an organization when an unexpected situation or event occurs. A contingency plan example may be positive but more often than not, it mostly refers to negative events.

With the help of contingency plan template, you can make sure that there’s always a continuity in the business. For various potential threats, many of the bigger business organizations have sets of business contingency plan templates.

In comparison to crisis management, you can consider a contingency plan as a proactive approach. This plan makes sure that you’re always prepared for any eventuality. Contrarily, when the eventuality occurs, a plan for crisis management enables you to control the response.

In risk project management, using a contingency plan example:

A contingency plan template responds to a negative event. This may affect or tarnish the reputation of an organization or its financial standing. However, a business contingency plan template in the business isn’t always negative. There are also some cases of positive contingency plans too.

You should also bear in mind that the contingency planning process is a proactive strategy. A contingency plan accounts for any disruptive events to make sure that if and when such events should occur, the company is always prepared.

Usually, they are part of the risk management department and project managers. They should know that the plan is simply an outline. However, there comes a time when the project may extend beyond this. This indicates that if the manager deems, he can be more prepared to make changes in the plan so that it would be more effective.

How to make your contingency plan?

Here are the steps to follow while making one for your company;

Analyze your resources and prioritize them

Throughout the organization, do research. This way, you can determine then prioritize the integral resources in your organization.

Determine the most important risks

To the researched resources, you just have to identify any potential threats. You can meet with executives and employees in order to get more a holistic picture of how events can affect your resources. Bring with you a consultant or a specialist in the identification of risks in order to be more precise.

Create a contingency plan template

It is suggested to start with the threats you consider high priority, although, you may come up with plans for each of the risks individually. This reflects the ones that have a high likelihood of occurring and have the most important impacts. You may begin working toward coming up with plans as time goes by for the lower-priority risks.

In addition, when you are making plans for identified risks, begin asking yourself about the steps to take. That way, the organization can go back to normal operations. Take into account factors such as employee activity, timelines, staff responsibilities, and more. Then, you can create a plan for each of the risks on the basis of these.

Share the plans

You have to ensure that all employees and stakeholders have access to every plan when you have accomplished them and when they had approved. You may make use of a mobile application for this essential step.

Maintain the plans

You should ensure that you reflect the changes in your business contingency plan template when the organization undergoes changes. There is also requirement to rehearse the plan with stakeholders on daily basis.

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Conclusion:

In conclusion, a contingency plan template is for the risks that you can determine. It isn’t for unknown or unidentified risks. The project management always have to consider several entry points for a contingency plan example.

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I am Ryan Duffy and legal writer. I received a bachelor of business administration (BBA) degree from London Business School. I have 8+ years of writing experience in the different template fields and working with ExcelTMP.com for 7 years. I work with a team of writers and business and legal professionals to provide you with the best templates.

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What is Business Continuity? A Comprehensive Exploration

Business Continuity is essential for keeping organisations running smoothly during disruptions. This blog explores "What is Business Continuity", the key components of a Business Continuity Plan, and the importance of resilience, recovery, and contingency. Learn how to protect your business and build trust with customers and stakeholders.

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• ISO 22301 Certified Business Continuity Management
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How can businesses stay prepared for unexpected disruptions? What is Business Continuity, and why is it so important? It's all about ensuring that essential functions keep running smoothly during and after a disaster. This blog explores the significance of Business Continuity, diving into key components like resilience, recovery, and contingency planning.  

Discover the tools and strategies that help businesses protect their operations and maintain trust with customers. Ready to find out how your business can weather any storm? Read on to learn more! 

Table of Contents 

1) What is Business Continuity? 

2) The Importance of Business Continuity 

3) Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan 

4) Essential Tools for Business Continuity 

5) Difference Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery 

6) Conclusion 

What is Business Continuity? 

Business Continuity refers to an organisation's ability to maintain essential functions during and after a disaster or disruption. It ensures that critical operations can continue, minimising the impact on the business. This could involve natural disasters, cyberattacks, or any other unexpected events that threaten to disrupt normal business activities. 

 A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a strategic framework that outlines the instructions an organisation must follow in the face of such disruptions. It includes detailed steps to take before, during, and after an event to ensure the continuity of operations.  

The Importance of Business Continuity 

Having a Business Continuity plan is crucial for several reasons:  

a) Minimising Downtime: Disruptions can bring business operations to a halt. A well-prepared plan helps minimise downtime and keep essential services running. 

b) Protecting Reputation: Companies that handle disruptions smoothly are seen as reliable. This helps maintain customer trust and brand reputation. 

c) Financial Stability: Extended downtime can lead to significant financial losses. By ensuring operations continue, businesses can protect their revenue streams. 

d) Legal Compliance: Some industries have regulations that require Business Continuity Plans. Compliance with these regulations avoids legal penalties and enhances operational security. 

e) Employee Safety: A comprehensive plan ensures that employees know what to do during a disruption, prioritising their safety and well-being. 

Key Components of a Business Continuity Plan 

A Business Continuity plan consists of several key components: 

Resilience 

Resilience refers to an organisation's ability to absorb shocks and continue operating. Building resilience involves: 

a) Redundancy: Having backup systems and resources in place to take over if primary ones fail. 

b) Training and Awareness: Ensuring employees are trained on the procedures to follow during disruptions. 

c) Technology: Implementing robust IT systems that can withstand disruptions, including cloud solutions and data backups. 

Recovery 

Recovery focuses on restoring business operations to normal after a disruption. Key elements include: 

a) Recovery Time Objectives (RTO): Setting targets for how quickly operations should be restored. 

b) Recovery Point Objectives (RPO): Determining the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. 

c) Recovery Strategies: Develop specific strategies for different types of incidents, such as natural disasters or online attacks. 

Contingency 

Contingency planning involves preparing for the unexpected. This includes: 

a) Alternative Work Locations: Identifying backup locations where employees can work if primary offices are inaccessible. 

b) Emergency Communication Plans: Establishing methods for communicating with employees, customers, and stakeholders during a disruption. 

c) Supply Chain Management: Ensuring that alternative suppliers are available if primary ones are affected. 

Learn about the implementation of Business Continuity with our ISO 22301 Lead Implementer Course – Join today!  

Essential Tools for Business Continuity 

Business continuity is crucial for ensuring that your operations can withstand and recover from disruptions. Here are some essential tools that can help:  

a) Navex One: This platform offers a comprehensive suite of risk and compliance management tools. It helps organisations ensure Business Continuity by addressing various compliance and risk management needs. 

b) ParaSolution: Known for its robust Business Continuity planning features, ParaSolution helps organisations prepare for and respond to disruptions. It offers tools for creating, managing, and testing Business Continuity plans. 

c) LogicManager: LogicManager simplifies governance, risk, and compliance processes. It provides a centralised platform for managing risks and ensuring Business Continuity through effective planning and response. 

d) Quantivate: Quantivate offers integrated tools for streamlining Business Continuity management. It helps organisations develop, implement, and maintain effective Business Continuity plans. 

e) Fusion Framework System: This system redefines resilience with its comprehensive features for Business Continuity management. It enables organisations to manage risks, incidents, and recovery processes efficiently. 

f) Riskonnect: Formerly known as Castellan Solutions, Riskonnect provides a roadmap to business resiliency. It offers tools for risk management, incident response, and business continuity planning. 

g) BC in the Cloud: BC in the Cloud enables efficient crisis management and Business Continuity planning. It offers a cloud-based platform for managing Business Continuity plans and responding to incidents. 

h) Oracle Risk Management: A trusted name in Business Continuity, Oracle Risk Management provides tools for managing risks and ensuring operational continuity. It helps organisations identify, assess, and mitigate risks effectively. 

i) Archer Resilience Management: Archer Resilience Management ensures operational continuity through comprehensive risk and Business Continuity management features. It helps organisations prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptions. 

Difference Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery 

While Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are related, they are not the same. Business Continuity maintains essential functions during and after a disruption. It encompasses the overall strategy and planning to keep operations running. 

Disaster Recovery, on the other hand, is a subset of Business Continuity. It specifically deals with restoring IT systems and data after a disruption. Disaster Recovery plans outline the steps to recover data, applications, and technology infrastructure to resume normal operations. 

Ultimately, Business Continuity is about keeping the business running, while Disaster Recovery focuses on restoring IT systems after an interruption. 

Learn Business Continuity with our ISO 22301 Certified Business Continuity Management Course – Join today!  

Conclusion 

Understanding "What is Business Continuity" is crucial for any organisation to withstand disruptions and maintain smooth operations. By implementing the key components of a Business Continuity plan, businesses can minimise downtime, protect their reputation, and ensure financial stability. Using essential tools and technologies strengthens these efforts. Investing in a comprehensive plan builds trust with customers, employees, and stakeholders, ensuring long-term success and stability. 

Learn to develop your own Business Continuity programme with our Certified Business Continuity Management Professional (CBCMP) Course – Join today!  

Frequently Asked Questions

The 4 P's of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) are People, Processes, Premises, and Providers. These elements ensure that all aspects of the business are covered in the continuity plan.  

The BCP process involves identifying potential risks, creating strategies to address risks, and developing a plan to maintain operations during disruptions. It also includes regular testing and updating of the plan to ensure its effectiveness.  

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The Knowledge Academy offers various Business Continuity Training , including the Certified Business Continuity Management Professional (CBCMP) Course and ISO 22301 Certified Business Continuity Management Course. These courses cater to different skill levels, providing comprehensive insights into Business Resilience vs Business Continuity.    

Our Business Improvement Blogs cover a range of topics related to Business Continuity, offering valuable resources, best practices, and industry insights. Whether you are a beginner or looking to advance your Business Continuity knowledge, The Knowledge Academy's diverse courses and informative blogs have got you covered.  

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How To Deploy Your Business Contingency Plan

A business contingency plan is an essential tool to ensure business continuity in case of an emergency.

What Is a Business Contingency Plan?

How to develop a contingency plan for your business, examples of business contingency plans, ip telephony as a support solution.

In a business environment where unpredictable situations can negatively affect the functioning of a company, it is important to have a solid contingency plan. Whether it's external factors like natural disasters or internal and external emergencies, a business contingency plan is essential to act in an orderly manner and minimise damage as much as possible. In this article, we will explore the importance of a well-established contingency plan and how to implement it within a company. We will also present examples of companies that have successfully faced crisis situations thanks to their contingency plan.

A contingency plan in a company is a set of measures and actions prepared in advance to deal with emergency situations, crises, or unexpected events that could interrupt or negatively affect the normal operations of the company. The main objective is to ensure business continuity and minimise negative impacts in case of an unfavourable situation. It must be personalised and adapted to the specific needs and characteristics of each company. It generally includes measures for crisis management, the protection of assets and resources, the safety of personnel and information, as well as internal and external communication. It is also crucial to regularly test and update the plan to ensure its effectiveness and adapt it to changes in the business environment. Having a contingency plan allows companies to be ready to face unforeseen situations, minimise risks, and ensure the continuity of operations, which helps maintain customer trust, reduce losses, and recover more quickly from any incident.

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Having a multichannel communication software like Ringover ensures you can get in touch with employees and clients across channels so your contingency plan can be successfully executed.

Developing a contingency plan requires a structured and detailed approach to identify possible crisis scenarios, define effective responses, and prepare the team to react quickly in adverse situations. Here is a step-by-step guide to developing a contingency plan:

1. Identify Potential Threats ✅

Conduct a risk analysis to identify possible emergency situations that could impact your business, such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, supply chain issues, etc.

2. Assess the Impacts ✅

Determine how these threats could affect operations, employees, customers, and the company's reputation. Set priorities based on the severity of the impacts.

3. Define Objectives and Strategies ✅

Establish clear objectives for the contingency plan, such as ensuring personnel safety, preserving company assets, and minimising operational disruption. Define strategies to achieve these objectives.

4. Create a Crisis Team ✅

Designate a multidisciplinary team trained and ready to act in case of an emergency. Assign roles and responsibilities to each team member.

5. Develop the Action Plan ✅

Detail the specific actions to follow for each identified crisis scenario. Include communication procedures, security protocols, necessary resources, and execution timelines.

6. Establish a Communication System ✅

Set up an internal and external communication system that allows for quickly and accurately informing employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders during a crisis.

7. Training and Simulations ✅

Organise regular training sessions with the crisis team to ensure they are ready to react in an emergency situation. Conduct crisis simulations to test the contingency plan.

8. Review and Update ✅

Regularly review and update the contingency plan to incorporate new risks, organisational changes, or lessons learned from previous incidents.

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Below, we have compiled examples of contingency measures to be taken in various scenarios:

Prolonged Power Outage ⚡

• Description: A power outage lasting several hours or days can disrupt a company's operations, especially if it heavily relies on electricity.
• Impact: Halted production, loss of unsaved data, disruption of internal and external communication, and reduced ability to serve customers.
• Contingency Plan: Implement backup generators, have a data backup plan in place, and establish procedures to maintain communication with employees and customers during the outage.

Cyberattack 🔒

• Description: A cyberattack, such as a ransomware attack, can compromise a company's IT systems, blocking access to critical data and potentially stealing confidential information.
• Impact: Data loss, operational interruptions, damage to the company's reputation, and potential legal and financial liabilities.
• Contingency Plan: Implement robust security systems, conduct regular data backups, have a cybersecurity incident response team, and a communication plan to inform affected parties.

An IP telephony solution for businesses, such as Ringover, can help you implement a contingency plan due to its ability to ensure communication continuity during unforeseen situations. Here are some benefits:

• Mobility and Remote Access: Ringover allows employees to connect and make calls from anywhere with internet access. In case of a contingency requiring remote work, communication remains uninterrupted.
• Scalability and Flexibility: IP telephony solutions are easily scalable, allowing for the addition or removal of lines as needed.
• Redundancy and Resilience: Operates on multiple devices (computers, smartphones, tablets) and networks, offering several access points for communication.
• Integration with Other Tools: Can integrate with CRMs , collaboration tools, and other software, facilitating process continuity and access to information.
• Centralised Management and Real-Time Monitoring: Provides centralised dashboards and real-time monitoring capabilities.
• Cost Reduction: Generally offers lower costs compared to traditional systems, especially for international calls.
• Call Recording: Useful for keeping detailed records during an emergency, ensuring that all important communications are documented.

In summary, a communication system like Ringover is essential for a contingency plan, ensuring that communication remains smooth and effective under any circumstances. Try it for free and discover why smooth communication is crucial for any business at every stage of its development.

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• The cloud-based multi-channel communication platform Ringover enhances productivity and ensures personalized, efficient exchanges with clients and candidates. Plus, there is a large library of integrations to connect your CRM system with our recruiting software so it’s all accessible on a single, simple interface.
• Empower by Ringover is a conversational AI sales enablement tool which offers call transcriptions and summaries, automatic topic identification, and advanced analytics to elevate productivity and efficiency thanks to the data behind your conversations.
• Cadence by Ringover, a sales prospecting solution , supports efficient business development via multichannel outreach, automation, and actionable insights.

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Advice & Guidance

Public toolkits, business continuity plan template.

Business continuity planning describes how a business will continue to operate during an unplanned process or service disruption. It should contain contingencies for every aspect of the business that might be affected, including manufacturing and business processes, assets, clients, business administration, business partners and other key stakeholders.

A business continuity management plan typically contains checklists detailing the actions required to manage the response to and recovery from disruption that impacts dependencies that enable the business to function. This should include loss of use of premises, supply chain/stock, machinery/equipment, IT/data, and staff. Plans should identify plan administrators, key personnel, and third parties, including their contact information, and should specify the lines of communication that should be followed. Strategies on how business operations can be maintained for both short-term and long-term outages should also be considered when planning business continuity.

The FPA’s Business Continuity Plan Template, produced by RISCAuthority , focuses on the development of a business continuity framework with plans and a team to enable a timely recovery, and is intended to be used by small and medium size businesses alongside the Business Continuity for Small and Medium Business Guide . This approximately aligns with the UK and EU definitions for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), i.e. ‘An SME is any organisation that has fewer than 250 employees and a turnover of less than €50 million or a balance sheet total less than €43 million’. The toolkit may also be useful to some larger organisations, however they should consider using more sophisticated, commercially available business continuity plan templates or software applications.

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Toolkit application

This tool is designed to help you create checklists and action plans for key personnel in the form of a PDF document which you can circulate to your business continuity planning team to use in the event of a serious business interruption event. It is designed to fill the gap between informal business continuity planning and more sophisticated proprietary software-based applications that typically require an annual user fee but provide an environment for developing complex business continuity plans, often with an online support service. It is primarily aimed at single-location businesses, or businesses with a few similar sites, but may be adapted to accommodate more multifaceted businesses, for example by implementing multiple complimentary set level business continuity plans that cross reference and in totality form a complete plan. Each will require a separate user account on the FPA website.

Tool design and use

You will need to consult with others for information as you work through the pre-event preparation as the ‘owner/administrator’ of your business continuity plan. The tool may take you some time to complete so you should save information as you go, as you might need to pause to source additional information and return to the template.

It is simple to navigate using the page number function at the top of each page, and you can save it as you go by clicking the save changes button at the bottom of each page. You can download the plan as a PDF file when you click the download PDF button.

When you log back in with your unique email address and password, the information you have saved, along with any uploaded documents, will be there for you to continue. If you have all the information to hand, the template will probably take you about two hours to complete.

The step-by-step examples and prompts in the template provide you with the information that you need to complete your business continuity planning, i.e. what actions are needed if the worst happens and a significant interruption to your business occurs.

Some sections have text fields with prompts that disappear when you start typing. This text will then re-appear if you remove your own text from the text box.

Some sections have example wording in the left margin that you can cut and paste into the text field and/or amend as best suits your local business needs e.g.:

Business Impact Analysis

The Recovery Priorities section (page 19) provides templates to prioritise products and activities and the recovery timelines required. This is the basis for a business impact analysis (BIA) to help you predict the consequences of disruptions to business processes, so you have the data you need to proactively create recovery strategies. The BIA will assist you to determine the criticality of business activities and associated resource requirements to help ensure operational resilience and continuity of operations following a business disruption e.g. how losing a key manufacturing process line(s) would affect company operations and revenue at an industrial facility.

Administration and implementation

Spending time now will make decisions and actions much easier to implement at the time of an incident and will be key to business response and recovery, as a coordinated team, ultimately saving your business time and money, maintaining services/product flow to customers, and getting your business back on its feet with the least disruption.

Your business continuity plan is hosted in a secure area which only you can access. The tool identifies you by your unique email address and password. It is safely stored for you to periodically review the information, which is recommended on a 6 monthly basis or as appropriate for your business. It is normal that roles, customers, suppliers, processes and procedures change over time and information must be kept up to date.

You can upload files to be stored in the same secure location but please note these will not be included in the PDF export and essential supporting documents, e.g. site plans must be circulated with your business continuity plan.

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