Natural disasters, theft, fire, power cuts, IT system failures, terrorist attacks and social media blunders – all of these crises, and more, could risk the continuity of your business. While business interruption insurance might cover some of the costs associated with a crisis that temporarily brings business to a shuddering halt, it can’t indemnify against damage to your company’s reputation or brand, not to mention loss of market share. Without a crisis management plan in place, your business could lose important clients, suffer temporarily or permanently decreased revenues and even go out of business altogether.
Fortunately, a well-thought-out and appropriately implemented crisis management plan could make it easier for your business to cope with, minimize and recover from disruptions cause by unforeseen events. First, you should sit everyone down and brainstorm potential threats to business continuity. Next, take steps to protect your business, and finally, put a plan in place to help your business cope in the event of an emergency.
Brainstorm Scenarios and Assess Risks
There’s seemingly no end to the kinds of catastrophes, large and small, that could derail your business. Anything from a key employee falling seriously ill to a plane crashing into your headquarters, and lots of stuff in between, could pose a threat to your company’s continuity. Many business leaders think it won’t happen to them – until it does.
Here are just a few of the contingencies that could force your business to close its doors, at least temporarily:
- Natural disasters, including earthquakes, tornadoes, mudslides, or flooding from burst pipes or storm water
- Fire
- Gas leaks
- Vandalism or theft of machinery, equipment, vehicles, or supplies;
- A loss of power
- Computer viruses, IT systems failures, hacker attacks, or other IT threats
- An outbreak of disease among staff or livestock
- The loss of important staff members
- A product recall, social media debacle, or other event affecting your business’s reputation
- A terrorist attack, mass shooting, or other violent incident
- Any crisis that affects your suppliers’ ability to do business with you or your customers’ ability to take advantage of your goods or services
Once you have brainstormed a list of possible events that could pose a threat to your business continuity, you need to think long and hard about the risk of one of those events happening to your business. Maybe earthquakes or tornadoes don’t happen in your part of the country; maybe you and your team feel that the risk of terrorist attack is small enough as to not be much of a concern. When planning for business continuity and crisis management, it’s important to focus your resources on those crises that pose the biggest threat to your continued survival. For most companies, these include IT systems failures, threats to the company’s reputation, loss or incapacitation of key staff members, theft and vandalism and certain acts of God.
Take Steps to Prevent Disaster
You can’t prevent every crisis, but you can head off some of them or take steps in advance to lessen their impact if they do occur. Use security to protect against theft and vandalism; use gas and electrical safety procedures to protect against gas leaks, power outages, fires and other threats. Protect your IT systems against hackers and other cyber security threats or systems failures, and make sure you have hard copies of important customer information, or offsite backups of your data, so you can stay in business if your IT systems fail. Ensure equipment, vehicles and your premises are insured, and know the limitations of your business interruption insurance. Make sure your business doesn’t rely too much on a few staff members — have them train others who can take over their duties if they become ill or quit suddenly.
Put a Plan in Place
For those business continuity threats you can’t prevent, you need a crisis management plan. It should outline the roles of individual employees in an emergency and what needs to be done to get everyone safe and get your business operating again as soon as possible. Explain immediate actions you can take in the first hour of an emergency situation to ensure the safety of your staff, if applicable, and protect resources. Plan to train staff in what they should do in an emergency, so when a crisis occurs, their training will take over.
Put your plan in writing, and keep copies at your home, at the bank and at the homes of senior staff members. Include in this plan the contact info of any services, customers, suppliers, insurers, neighboring businesses, utility companies or others who will need to be contacted in an emergency. Don’t forget to include contact info for service providers, like plumbers, locksmiths, IT specialists, glaziers or electricians, who may be needed to repair damage to premises or equipment.
Finally, make sure to include a plan for notifying employees, suppliers, customers and the media – in that order – of the emergency and its effects. A company spokesperson is probably the best person to deal with this.
Threats to your business continuity can’t always be foreseen or prevented, but with some planning and a little luck, they can be handled with minimal interruption to your business. Then, you can get back up and running again as soon as possible.
Photograph by Slightly Different