Would your organisation survive the Hit by a Bus Test?

Food and manufacturing businesses working to BRCGS standards need reliable training and competency records. Spreadsheets and in-house systems are often fragile, error-prone, and reliant on a single “guru” to operate.

Every organisation has a “go-to” person who holds vital knowledge. They know how the training spreadsheets work, how the compliance records are updated, or how the system talks to auditors.

But what if they were unavailable tomorrow? Even a planned holiday or a short period of sick leave can leave operations exposed.

This is the guru effect, and it is a serious continuity risk for regulated businesses in the UK and Ireland.

The Hit by a Bus Test helps you identify if your organisation could withstand an audit or continue smoothly when that key person is not available.

• 🚌A UK public sector body discovered just before a key analyst left that all knowledge of a critical system was undocumented, leading to disruption and costly handover delays.
  
  
• 🚌Research into 19 UK and Irish organisations found that almost all relied on uncontrolled spreadsheets, with frequent errors and little or no governance.
  
  
• 🚌Several well-known organisations have suffered major downtime and reputational damage due to fragile systems that lacked resilience or backup support.

Each case highlights the same issue: when knowledge is concentrated in one person or one fragile tool, business continuity is at serious risk.