This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Continuity plans are almost always written about the building. What happens if the power fails, if the warehouse burns, if the server goes down.

Companies do not usually lose a building. They lose a person

And not in a fire — on an ordinary Tuesday, to a competitor, with two weeks' notice. What follows is the same sequence every time. The process that person ran turns out to be documented nowhere, because they were the documentation. Nobody can take it over, because a bench was never built for a role nobody classified as critical. And the people who remain cannot absorb it, because headcount was set by what the budget allowed rather than by what the work requires. None of that appears in a plan about the power supply. Real continuity rests on three things: you know your current state, you know your risks by name, and every critical role has a second person.

What this course covers

Forty-one lessons across those three. The current state first: what an audit is and how it differs from analytics, the five mistakes that make it a formality, three levels from compliance to strategic alignment, ten-minute maturity scoring, a thirteen-section checklist with weighted index and 729 items, four data collection methods, the RACI matrix for who runs it, fifteen metrics with formulas, and objection handling. Then risk by name: what human risk is, the heat map, the fraud and safety triangles, cognitive bias and conflict of interest, the 4I model, risks at individual and company level, ISO 31000 and the risk hierarchy, escalation, warning signs at senior level, risk culture, the three lines of defence, a decision checklist, and where accountability lands. Then the second person: why succession is a continuity question, criteria for critical roles, the impact and risk matrix, the nine-box grid, rotations and shadowing, transparency against confidentiality, bench strength and early warning signals. Then capacity: headcount as a cost line and a capability, segmentation, full-time equivalents, gap analysis, Delphi and nominal group forecasting, workload analysis, and optimisation through combining functions and removing duplication rather than cutting people. Then the response itself: hiring under uncertainty, reducing payroll in order of damage, development with no budget, assessing quickly and choosing who goes, delivering that news, and the contingency plan. Finally recovering the operation: the efficiency checklist, a strategy session after disruption, culture as delivery, the goal system, processes and automation, structure and its five drivers, projects, cash flow, infrastructure and procurement, and the accountability table.

Every example comes from a company with employees

All six blocks were recorded for a corporate audience, and five of them for the people function. That is not a stretch, it is the argument: business continuity fails on people rather than on equipment, so a risk register, a succession plan, a headcount calculation and a crisis response are work with people by definition. The operations block is the one part about the function itself, and it carries no industry. The audit block is a method applicable to anything — the 729-item checklist is about the people function, the weighting logic and index construction are not. There is very little to translate here. If you run a network of contractors rather than a payroll, the machinery will be heavier than your situation requires.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike Pritula. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 41 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: the maturity scoring, the thirteen-section audit checklist, the risk heat map, ISO 31000, the three lines of defence, the impact and risk matrix, the nine-box grid, gap analysis, and the contingency plan structure

• Continuity treated as a people problem, which is where it actually breaks

Where to start

Name one person whose resignation this month would genuinely hurt, then write down who would do their work on the Monday after. If you cannot finish that sentence, you have found your first risk. Enrol now and start today.