Once you've documented your plan, distributed it, and trained staff to use it, you might think you're finished. For your plan to be really effective when things go wrong, however, you need to maintain it, and you need to keep staff aware of procedures.
Maintenance is fairly straightforward. Repeat the following process every six months or so:
- Have members of the team representing management, technical staff, and communicators review the plan. Is anything out of date? Have your procedures changed? Have responsibilities changed?
- Document any changes.
- Distribute your updated plan as described in Get the Word Out.