Who Is on a Disaster Recovery Team?

Your disaster recovery will depend on how well team members understand and have practiced their roles. A company’s Disaster Recovery Team is drawn from available personnel resources, and may include service vendors that support facilities, technology, communications, logistics, and other critical operations.

The Disaster Recovery Team functions as a strategic planning and tactical response unit. Team members may be assigned temporary duties, responsibilities, and a level of authority beyond their normal employment classification, so the team structure needs to be documented before the pressure of an outage, facility loss, cyber incident, weather event, or other disruption.

What Is a Disaster Recovery Team?

A disaster recovery team is the group responsible for planning, coordinating, and directing recovery work when a business disruption threatens essential operations. The NIST CSRC definition of a disaster recovery plan describes a DRP as a written plan for recovering information systems or critical applications after major failures or destruction of facilities, but the people assigned to execute that plan are just as important as the document itself.

In the Disaster Management Team structure, the team is comprised of executives, managers, and department heads with functional responsibilities involving several offices, departments, or facilities. The team may include subgroups as appropriate, and member responsibilities and authorities need to be clearly defined. Team members must be notified of their duties, attend meetings, and remain current on company policies.

That means disaster recovery is not only an IT assignment. It is a management structure that links executives, department leaders, facilities, finance, HR, communications, outside vendors, and technical recovery staff into one reporting chain. When the plan is clear, each member knows what to restore, who can authorize decisions, and how information moves during the recovery effort.

Who Is on the Disaster Management Executive Committee?

The Disaster Management Executive Committee is charged with the responsibility for disaster management planning, which means creating a comprehensive Disaster Management Plan for the company. The Committee is comprised of the company’s President or CEO, selected executives and senior managers, and may contain members of the company’s Board of Directors.

The Disaster Management Plan is used as the guiding mechanism for fulfilling the company’s duties and responsibilities regarding local, state, and federal regulations. Having a disaster recovery manual simplifies contingency planning before disaster strikes because it turns authority, notification, and recovery expectations into a practical operating reference.

The Executive Committee should make the hard decisions before an emergency begins: who can declare a disaster, who controls spending, who speaks for the company, how service vendors are activated, and how temporary authority ends when operations return to normal. Those assignments prevent a recovery effort from depending on whoever happens to be available first.

Specific disaster planning actions include:

• Identifying the individual members of the Disaster Management Executive Committee.
• Assigning powers, authority, and responsibilities to individual members.
• Providing for the termination of status when emergency authority is no longer required.
• Identifying each role in an appointment document and obtaining acknowledgement from each Committee member.

What Does the Disaster Management Team Chair Do?

The Disaster Management Team Chairpersons are responsible for assigning the research, development, and implementation of the Disaster Management Plan throughout the organization. The Chairpersons are also responsible for assuming control over business operations during and after the disaster until business operations return to normal.

The Chair role is the center of leadership and administration for the company’s recovery efforts. The Chair does not have to perform every recovery task personally, but the Chair must make sure that tasks are assigned, decisions are documented, and the team’s work remains aligned with the Disaster Management Plan.

In practice, the Chair keeps the response from splitting into disconnected departmental efforts. Operations may need one priority, finance another, HR another, and IT another. The Chair makes sure those priorities are resolved through the plan rather than through improvisation.

What Do Disaster Management Team Coordinators Do?

The Disaster Management Team Coordinators are charged with the responsibility for creating a comprehensive Disaster Management Plan for the company and for implementing the decisions made by the Chairpersons and the Disaster Management Executive Committee during a disaster. The Coordinators are responsible for effective management and implementation of the company’s recovery efforts.

Coordinators translate executive decisions into action. They confirm which departments are affected, keep contact lists current, maintain the notification and reporting structure, and track whether recovery tasks are actually moving. They also help department leaders understand when their temporary duties begin, what authority they have, and when to escalate decisions back to the Chair or Executive Committee.

Testing matters here. FEMA’s guidance on why disaster exercises are essential for every business emphasizes having continuity plans, testing those plans through exercises, and training staff on communication, roles, and recovery contacts. That is exactly where coordinators add value: they turn the written plan into practiced behavior.

What Do Disaster Management Team Leaders Do?

The Disaster Management Team Department/Office Leaders and service vendors are responsible for acting as Coordinators for their respective areas of responsibility and report directly to the Disaster Management Team Coordinators. These leaders connect the central plan to the real work in each department, office, facility, or vendor-supported function.

A department leader might be responsible for employee safety checks, workspace relocation, order processing, customer communications, equipment recovery, or manual workarounds. A service vendor might be responsible for restoring internet access, repairing facilities, recovering records, or supporting backup systems. Each role should be documented so that the person or vendor understands the scope of authority, reporting line, and expected deliverables.

Your disaster management plan identifies all personnel responsible for the initial and continuing research, development, and implementation of the disaster recovery plan. It establishes the formal notification and reporting structure for all members of the Disaster Recovery Team, describes the duties and responsibilities of all personnel, and assigns appropriate levels of authority to those personnel.

How Should You Build the Disaster Recovery Team Roster?

Start with the functions the company must restore, then assign people to those functions. The roster should include executive authority, recovery coordination, department leadership, vendor support, communications, facilities, technology, HR, finance, and any operation that must continue or restart quickly. A small company may combine several roles into one person, while a larger company may need subgroups for multiple offices, departments, or facilities.

The most important test is whether every person knows what they are responsible for before the disruption begins. If a role has authority to spend money, contact vendors, speak to employees, handle customer messaging, or suspend normal procedures, that authority should be written into the appointment documents and acknowledged by the assigned person.

Review free policies and procedures to see how easy and fast it is to customize the MS-Word templates for your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Should Be on a Disaster Recovery Team?

A disaster recovery team should include executives, managers, department heads, team coordinators, department or office leaders, and selected service vendors. The exact roster depends on the company’s facilities, systems, personnel resources, and recovery priorities.

What Does a Disaster Management Executive Committee Do?

The Disaster Management Executive Committee creates the company’s Disaster Management Plan, assigns authority, identifies committee members, and documents each person’s responsibilities. It may include the President or CEO, selected executives, senior managers, and board members.

Why Are Disaster Recovery Roles Important?

Disaster recovery roles are important because team members may need temporary duties, responsibilities, and authority beyond their normal employment classification. Clear roles reduce confusion when the company must protect people, restore operations, and communicate decisions.

How Often Should a Disaster Recovery Team Practice?

A disaster recovery team should practice often enough that members understand their duties before a disruption occurs. Regular exercises, role reviews, and plan updates help confirm that the notification structure, reporting lines, and recovery procedures still work.

Can Service Vendors Be Part of the Disaster Recovery Team?

Yes. Service vendors can be part of the Disaster Recovery Team when they support facilities, technology, communications, logistics, or other critical recovery work. Their responsibilities and reporting lines should be documented before a disaster occurs.