16 October 2025 Verity Schommer
As we get ready to take part in this year’s ShakeOut, the New Zealand-wide earthquake drill and accompanying tsunami hikoi, it’s a good time to reflect on our last emergency and business continuity tabletop exercise.
As the designated ‘Business Continuity Officer’ at Effect, I was interested to see what would be useful to the team, and what might have been missed in our planning. Our scenario was a weekday earthquake, run as a 90 minute lunchtime discussion covering the immediate response through to recovery.
To make it a little bit fun, we dealt each person a playing card to decide who would be “unavailable” at different times. My card had me trapped under an unsecured shelving unit, which sparked discussion on something you don’t necessarily think about: What do you do when you can’t safely help someone? Who decides?
Exercises like these highlight that no plan covers everything, so talking and making collective decisions is a good way for people to feel confident that as a group you’ll be able to make sound decisions when needed. (And for those worried about my hypothetical situation, the team made the right call to evacuate and notify emergency services of the situation!)
As someone who's often had their hand in the basics of emergency and business continuity, I've found people tend to be more focused on what to do in the immediate aftermath, than on the business continuity side.
Which is understandable, as you want to be able to rely on scripted actions in a situation where you don't have time to plan. Whereas people expect you'll have the time after the immediate response to discuss and plan next steps. Whatever the reason, having simple, clear processes in place for both stages avoids confusion and gives everyone confidence.
Communication, Clarity, and Cadence – previously mentioned by our CEO, Pete in his post on The three C's of delivery in an emergency, came up over and over again during our discussions at each stage of the tabletop exercise. If you have time, I recommend having another read of Pete's post here.
Processes should be there to help you. When things are getting chaotic, following a clear process can give you and your team mates a sense of 'things are under control'.
"When a curve ball hits, it can be easy to throw out all processes and firefight but this can lead to confusion, stress and not achieving the outcomes."
Pete Lister, CEO
I like to plan for fallbacks by thinking, 'if step one is not possible, then this becomes the new step one' and so on. Of course it can be easy to overcomplicate, so remembering to keep it clear and simple is key.
In emergencies the adrenaline takes over and people act in ways that even they may not have predicted, and in isolation. It can lead to miscommunication and double-ups, building frustration and upset across the team.
Many Business Continuity Plan (BCP) guides will suggest a call tree. In combination with a simple comms plan, it's an underrated tool for resolving confusion and preventing miscommunication. Everyone should know who they contact, who they wait to hear from, and when.
Ideally people sit tight until they hear from the person they're supposed to hear from. But those comms need to come through quickly, otherwise people start to worry, contact their co-worker friends, or their managers, and that's when phone lines can get blocked up and mixed messaging starts.
During the exercise we discussed if a group instant message to the whole team would be a good way to mitigate the insecurity around waiting for a phone call, and give our call tree activators time before sending out more formal communications. We decided that before they activate the call tree, they need to send a one-off message that tells the whole team:
They're aware of what's happened, and
How they'll be in touch (ie "by phone" or "on Teams") within what timeframe.
This small step helps calm nerves and keeps phones and channels clear.
It sounds obvious when you write it down, but people can be unpredictable in emergency situations, and so whenever I'm creating emergency plans or thinking about business continuity, I try to include this statement: Remember patience and empathy – crises affect people differently.
We really focused on the immediate aftermath of the scenario, and less on the detail of how we might get back up and running – the actual business continuity plan steps. Next time we'll try and shift the focus, and will also build in scenarios where key staff are unavailable so we can test whether our documentation truly supports others to keep things moving.
Continuous practice and discussion is important – everyone has good ideas and thinks about things others might miss
How much can change over a year, not just expiry dates on emergency supplies!
Getting everyone talking about it and caring
As a small business making sure people have the basics to get home safely – we provide our team with a starter grab bag
And not forgetting the pets of our dog-friendly office in our planning!
Here are some great resources we found useful in helping with your planning and practicing of emergency and business continuity plans:
Business.govt.nz Continuity and contingency planning
GetReady site
Agility Recovery - Business continuity testing
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