My heart goes out to all the victims of the recent fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and shootings. These disasters have brought a lot of people together working to help those who are so desperately in need.
I remember my own emergency events such as a traumatic car accident, job losses, and unexpected medical issues. All of these highlighted the need for emergency preparedness. Most emergencies do not come in the form of natural disasters. Most hit closer to home and without all the news fanfare.
For small businesses, it could be power outages, website hackers, construction/street closures obstructing access, or even illness of key players that can have damaging impact on a business.
A small business could risk everything if they don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place. Here are 7 basic steps to create your own disaster recovery plan.
- Determine the types of risk your business may be exposed to, such as fire, tornado, flooding, power outages, etc. List each type.
- Determine your assets including people (employees, customers, vendors), equipment, data, etc.
- List the activities that keep your business running.
- Create a plan to protect your assets and enable continued business operation during the disasters you’ve identified. This could include working from home, setting up an offsite business location, or having strategic alliances with people that can help you keep things running.
- Have a consistent daily backup scheduled for all computer systems or live back up to an online backup server. I can’t say this one often enough – back up, back up, back up!
- Have an emergency fund
- Make sure your insurance coverage is current and sufficient.
- Keep your accounts receivables and payables current that way you won’t have to seek payments during a crisis when your customers may be preoccupied with their own survival.
- Have a plan for emergency communications such as an alternative phone number, email, satellite phone, etc.
These are just a few of the things you can do to protect your business during a disaster. For additional information see https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/node/43155.