Don't forget to make allowances for employee absences in your disaster recovery plan. Here are some tips for avoiding holes in your plan.
Staffing issues are generally not considered in creating and managing a disaster recovery (DR) plan, but they can have a dramatic impact on how well your plan performs in the event that it is needed. IT professionals are sometimes taken for granted, and individual roles within the department aren't well understood, which can lead to some severe problems if disasters strike.
Summer is a very popular time for vacations. These breaks are a necessary part of working life, as overworked and exhausted employees tend to perform much less effectively than their counterparts who take vacation time. The problems arise when critical IT employees, who have responsibility for components of the DR plan, are on vacation when a disaster hits your organisation. There are several strategies to avoid the problems that this would cause.
First and foremost, no single person should hold sole responsibility for any particular aspect of your DR plan. Job security aside, there's really no reason to invest all that power in the hands of a single staff person. Each aspect of the overall plan should be performable by at least two people, both of whom are adequately trained to perform the tasks they are responsible for. This is true even if a particular task would be considered "secondary" to their normal responsibilities; otherwise you could find yourself with an improperly trained employee at the switch.
You will also have to ensure that not everyone who can perform vital functions goes on vacation at once. This might sound like a no-brainer, but with multiple persons all requesting time off in overlapping schedules, it's very easy to accidentally leave one or more aspects of your DR plan without the proper employees to perform them. No matter if you use seniority, past vacation time, or any other factor to figure out who goes on vacation when, you still must be ready to draw the line and ensure that all aspects of the plan are properly staffed.
Of course, if there is only one person in your organisation responsible for the whole plan â€" perhaps because you have only one IT staffer â€" you have a lot more difficulties than larger firms. It will be difficult, but you will have to make sure that non-IT personnel can either perform the basic operations necessary, or find some other way to let that staffer take some very well-deserved break time. Failure to do either will result in either no one who can enact the DR plan during an emergency, or an IT staffer who is frustrated, overworked, and much more likely to jump ship.
All employees, including IT staff, need some time off to recuperate from the day-to-day grind. This doesn't mean that your DR plan takes a vacation along with them. Take staff needs into account, cross-train when you can, and always remember the human factors that make up your technical recovery plan.
