Extreme Behavioral Risk Management (XBRM), a division of AllSector Technology Group®, Inc., is a consulting practice specializing in business continuity, emergency management planning, disaster recovery, and homeland security. Our team develops plans and prepares an organization’s decision-makers and first responders by providing consulting, education, training and resources to develop plans that are calibrated to anticipate emotional and behavioral responses for all types of enterprise-wide incidents, across all phases of business continuity planning. We also work with organizations to validate their plans by conducting behaviorally accurate drills and exercises.
XBRM’s planning and preparedness programs differs from many because we consider the human factor of business continuity™. Our firm is home to some of the world’s foremost experts in disaster human factors and offers a compressive portfolio of products and services that include addressing this important, and often overlooked, aspect of continuity planning and incident management.
Our team’s planning and advise is better informed because we have first-hand experience responding to business disruptions, be they departmental, operational, or corporate-wide; short-term or long-term; result in a loss of utilities or technology; or a partial departmental closure to a corporate-wide shutdown. We have the skill set for recovering operations and the technological expertise required to resume operations.
XBRM approach employs an all hazards enterprise-wide approach to our planning process and uses a multi-disciplinary team to serve our customers. Our consultants have certifications from Disaster Recovery Institute, Business Continuity Institute, International Association of Emergency Managers and National Center for Crisis Management.
Anticipating the Human Factor
In the aftermath of a catastrophic event, when technical assets are unavailable or destroyed, it is human behavior – and often human behavior alone – that determines the speed and efficacy of disaster recovery efforts.
Knowledge of human behavior, in all phases of emergency management, is critical in the development of effective emergency policies, plans and training programs. For many years, business continuity planners worked under a simple assumption: When a disaster strikes, people will follow plans and procedures. Psychologists and other behavioral scientists have found that this idea fails to consider the often-surprising behavior of people during emergencies.
For disaster plans to be truly effective, an understanding of the full range of behavioral responses across the different stages of disasters and emergencies should serve as a core component of the broader, interdisciplinary planning process.
The recent benchmarking study conducted by Continuity Insights Magazine and KPMG, revealed that 35% of respondents indicated that the “weakest link” in the continuity plans and strategy was “people risks.” Traditional business continuity plans do not adequately take to into account the many forces of human behavior, especially when scenarios include extreme fear, harmful behaviors and survival responses.
Planners often wrongly assumed that the organization’s emergency plans will be automatically accepted, understood and acted upon by all. The principles of human psychology inform us that the behavior of individuals and groups is shaped more by numerous intangible factors than by official or executive demand.
In most organizations, the term “behavioral” is typically associated with the mental health, wellness or employee assistance programs (EAPs) that address a range of post-incident emotional and psychological needs for employees and their families. Our proactive approach allows for much broader understanding of behavior, encouraging the desired emergency response from employees, responders and leaders, during the emergency.
The central premise behind Business Continuity Planning Human Factors (BCPh) is straightforward: in a crisis, people will be part of the problem or part of the solution. BCPh is the application of scientifically accepted behavioral principles (individual, group, organizational and occupational) to aid in the development of disaster and emergency policies, plans and programs. XBRM helps organizations translate behavioral research findings into actionable information for decision makers and crisis managers.
Our model encompasses many research approaches, such as: case studies, theoretical analyses, computer models, literature reviews, and psychological studies. This holistic, evidence-informed approach allows our team to help yours in developing the most behaviorally-accurate emergency plans possible. The goal of this approach is to reduce the frequent of human variability in all phases of emergency management.
Please click here to go to our Contact Page, or call us at 212.366.8200, or E-mail us at info@XBRM.com today to discuss how we can help your organization or company ensure that in a crisis, your people can be part of the solution and not part of the problem.