Transcript of Leadership.mov

   Welcome to your continuity connection. What is the most important resource in your department or agency? Well its you! The people who lead and staff your office get the work done and ensure important services are delivered to the public. Some of you may be designated to work at alternate locations during emergencies and events in which your primary office is not functional.  In continuity of operations there's the emergency relocation team, and these people are pre-designated prior to any incident. They are part of the COOP plan. If you have a robust training program, they're going to know who they are.  If you haven't been designated with continuity  responsibilities, your leadership needs to keep you informed about your department or  agencies operations and your role.  The leaders should have situational updates from time to time to make sure employees are informed about what's going on.  Even those people at home, and there are ways to do that also. In the unfortunate event of a  loss of department or agency leadership who would be in charge? Do you know? How would you find out? A part of any good program including continuity of operations is  orders of succession and delegation of authority. Normally in any program the leadership is  a part of orders of succession, so if one leader is incapacitated, not able to make it there, there's someone that's designated to take on that position. One of the situations in which leadership and staff may not be available for work is a  pandemic influenza. The government has focused a lot of attention on this. Continuity planners are developing  strategies to ensure your department or agency can still function.  During a pandemic, the key thing there is to keep people isolated. Telework would be a would be huge in that capacity, but the  problem is, telework has to be trained. People have to be trained on  telework, they have to know how operate equipment, connect equipment at home. Leadership can do those kinds of things to make sure that their staff are ready during a  pandemic or whatever.  No matter what the emergency, you can mitigate the  effect on you and your family by  developing a family support plan. We encourage all of our  employees to make sure that their families are taken care of because if they're thinking about their families they're not going to be able to perform their essential function missions. We want people to take care of their families first and prepare them for any type of incident. Being a leader or staff member involved in continuity programs is not something to be taken lightly.  There's a lot of preparation required in the workplace and even at home.  Even if you aren't designated with continuity responsibilities your department or agency will need you. The good news is you aren't out there alone. Take a look at the many resources on the Internet related to continuity  family support planning, and pandemic influenza.  When you do you will make the continuity connection.