How to Prepare For Business Disasters

It might happen some day. Despite not being located in a disaster-prone area, calamity like wind storms, tornadoes and earthquakes can hit any time with little or no warning, destroying your entire business. Even if a flood doesn't put your business under water, it may distance your customers and suppliers. Alternatively, lengthy illness, accident or unexpected death of one of your business' co-founders can also mean the collapse of your company.

Hence, while running the business, you should have a plan of how you will handle catastrophe. Although, you cannot be hundred percent sure that you have covered all the unpleasant possibilities, here are some simple steps that can help protect your business and its assets. Let's talk about them.

1. Find out what might go wrong:

First of all, list out what could go wrong with your business. Once you have identified the threats, you need to rank them in order of maximum impact and likelihood.

Next, assess how vulnerable your business is to those calamities. For example, think about whether the employees are properly trained on an appropriate course of action to be taken in the face of natural calamity. If you're worried about security issues, find out whether the company's security system is capable of thwarting insider theft. Other exigencies include sudden power failure, an accident on the work site or incapacitation of key staff members.

2. Write down a plan:

Your next job is to create an 'emergency action plan". It is basically a manually written document for dealing with the identified threats to your business. The modules of your plan must make sense, and also be in conformity with prevailing law. For instance in the United States, it should contain an OSHA-directed evacuation plan; must follow the Sarbanes-Oxley antifraud law; should not contradict the provisions of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the National Fire Protection Association's Life-Safety Code and so on.

Let's give you an idea of how to go about that emergency action plan.

I. A list of people responsible for assessing the degree of risk to the business should be clearly included.

II. A list of names and designations of people who are responsible for making decisions, checking response actions, and bringing the business back to its normal operations should be incorporated. Make sure that someone responsible is in charge of contacting emergency service providers. In addition, nominate a person to act as a contact point for outside parties, such as customers and vendors.

III. Instructions about the proper handling of various machinery and equipment must be included.

IV. Guidelines on emergency rescue operations, medical tasks, fire fighting and other activities must be provided.

3. Sit with your people:

Once you are through with drafting the plan, sit down with your employees to discuss it. Your people should be properly informed about all the threats that could strike, and what they are expected to do in the event of disaster.

If they seem to have no prior experience of handling any type of business crisis, you had better arrange a trial run for them. It might also result in your employees devising a more efficient strategy of tackling.

4. Inform the people concerned:

You are also supposed to inform the authorities and other service providers about the identified threats and the action plan you have prepared to deal with them. During a crisis, the concerned people are typically the police, the local fire department and the emergency medical service.

It is a proven fact that those businesses that acquainted the authorities with this information lost less in times of trouble. At the same time, being experienced in handling emergencies, they can provide you with valuable advice on how to improve your preparedness.

While these measures may help your business recover from the ravages of disaster, it might still reel under the aftermath of calamity. Often, injured parties might sue your business for damages suffered on its premises. Another time we'll talk about how you can save your company from being dragged into court at the end of a business disaster, and how to come out on top, should the worst happen.

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