Telecom Recovery Training

Recovery Team and Staff Training

Once the decision has been made to investigate the consequences of any downtime in a company's communications and to review the possible solutions, management will consider staff involvement and disaster recovery training. A supervisor can be appointed, initially as part of the Business Continuity Team, and subsequently as team leader of the recovery team with responsibility for training.

With the ever increasing likelihood of external factors (e.g. terrorism) causing a disruption to services, plus the spiralling complexity of comms systems and their inherent failure rates, the need for a suitable telecom recovery plan is also escalating. The supervisor will need to have a firm understanding of the assessment process, the company communications infrastructure, external factors, plus possess management and training skills.

The recovery plan will need to be reinforced with a recovery team who will be responsible for both the maintenance and the implementation. Team members will remain involved in the on-going refinement of the plan as company requirements change.

Training Requirements In most cases, unless automated, the supervisor will action the recovery plan in the event of a telecoms outage. Key personnel in the recovery team may then be used to direct staff to posts where calls can be taken via alternate means. These may be home phones, or PCs featuring VoIP softphones, or staff may be directed to take calls via their mobile phones. Other key staff may set up conferences either in-house or via a Teleconferencing service, or may be involved in contact with the media if necessary.

Telecommunications Downtime

Dependant on the DR solution, in-house staff may also be involved in the restoration of the primary communications system, whether it's a phone system that has failed and affected contact with the outside world or internal networking. A hardware or software engineer may be available and be included in the recovery team.

For smaller concerns a single supervisor may be sufficient to implement the DR plan, but corporates will have a structured recovery network allowing for the number of branches and staff affected. A hosted DR service can often be the most cost effective solution to telecoms recovery and for a monthly rental fee the costs of in-house solutions - hardware, staffing and training - can be heavily mitigated.