Organisations rely on a thin web of people, systems, suppliers and facilities, and any strand can fail. Boards, regulators, insurers and customers increasingly ask not whether a continuity plan exists but who is accountable for it, when it was last tested and what was learned. Many plans fail that scrutiny because governance was never designed around them.

The Governance and Compliance in Business Continuity & Operational Resilience Training Course focuses on that missing layer. Participants begin with the foundations, covering policy, scope, roles and the relationship between continuity, risk management and resilience. They then work through business impact analysis, recovery objectives and strategy selection, always asking how each decision would be evidenced to an auditor. Compliance is treated in depth, from mapping requirements and ISO 22301 clauses to internal audit, exercise programmes and the management of corrective actions.

The course is workshop based. Delegates build governance documents for a realistic organisation, run a tabletop exercise, review a sample plan against a control checklist and draft a resilience report suited to board committees, leaving with materials they can adapt on return to work.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Define continuity governance, including policy, scope, roles and decision rights.
• Conduct a business impact analysis and set recovery time and point objectives.
• Link continuity risk assessment to the wider enterprise risk framework.
• Map regulatory and ISO 22301 requirements to controls and evidence.
• Plan and facilitate tabletop and live exercises and record the outcomes.
• Assess the resilience of critical suppliers and outsourced services.
• Design assurance, audit and corrective action processes for continuity.
• Report resilience status clearly to executives and board committees.

The course is relevant to those who own, assure or oversee continuity arrangements, such as:

• Business continuity and operational resilience managers
• Enterprise risk and compliance officers
• Internal auditors reviewing continuity and recovery arrangements
• IT service continuity and disaster recovery managers
• Heads of operations and facilities managers
• Company secretaries and governance officers supporting board committees
• Banking, insurance and utility sector resilience leads
• Public sector and health service emergency planning officers

Participants take away:

• A continuity governance framework with clear roles and escalation routes.
• A compliance matrix linking ISO 22301 clauses to evidence.
• A completed business impact analysis format with recovery targets.
• An annual exercise and assurance calendar.
• A one-page resilience dashboard suitable for board reporting.
• A supplier dependency questionnaire for critical third parties.

The course is facilitated as a working clinic, with:

• A single case organisation carried through all five days
• Template-based workshops for governance documents and impact analysis
• A facilitated tabletop exercise with realistic injects
• Peer critique of draft board reports
• Short briefings that connect each topic to audit and compliance expectations

On completing the programme, with full attendance and finished exercises, participants receive a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion issued by Vision Reach Global Consultancy.