BCAW 2019 at Paragon Banking Group PLC

• 29 May 2019
• Stephen

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Hi, my name is Stephen Austin and I am Business Continuity Manager at Paragon Banking Group PLC. I started with Paragon back in November 2018 after an almost 30-year career history in Business Continuity in operational, managerial, consultancy and business development roles.

I have been a Member of the Business Continuity Institute for a very long time, with a very low membership number and joined in the days when you were introduced as opposed to having to sit an exam. I am also a Committee Member of the BCI London Chapter.

On joining Paragon last year, I made an early decision to utilise BCAW 2019 as an opportunity to further improve levels of Business Continuity awareness across the Group. The activities that we did to promote awareness and to mark BCAW were as follows: -

Intranet Daily ‘Blogs’

Each day throughout BCAW, a member of the Executive or Senior Management Team posted a ‘blog’ on our intranet giving their personal ‘take’ on Business Continuity and also in respect of the role they undertake within our business. Our COO, sponsor of Business Continuity within Paragon, ‘led from the front’ with the opening article.

Additional articles were also posted in respect of the 3 activities referenced below.

Business Continuity Team Building Event

To mark the opening of BCAW, we held an inaugural team building event for our departmental plan owners and plan managers. A healthy attendance took part in a highly interactive session which included Business Continuity and Corporate Incident Management updates, a survival and prioritisation activity and a ‘build a BCP Exercise in 30 minutes’ session.

Crisis Management Training and Exercise Event

On Wednesday I delivered a Crisis Management Training and Exercise Event for one of Paragon’s other sites, bringing Senior Management of that business area together with senior Group support staff from IT, HR, Group Property and External Relations.

BCI London Chapter Networking Event

To mark the closure of BCAW 2019, I chaired the BCI London Chapter Networking Event at Willis Towers Watson in London. With over 60 attendees, this was another successful event with attendees benefiting from a number of highly interesting presentations from keynote speakers from the City of London Police, Sungard, BCI, Crisis Managers UK and F24.

I will certainly be utilising BCAW 2020 to further improve levels of awareness and seek to increase the level of activity and utilise material made available by the BCI.