You’ve worked hard opening and running your business. Losing it to a disaster would be financially devastating for you — and for your employees. Would you know what to do if disaster struck your business? One of the most important steps you can take in running your business is creating a disaster preparation, prevention and recovery plan.
The following guide can help you to determine what you need to include in your plan to make sure your business is protected against common threats, prepared for natural and other disasters and can quickly recover should an unpreventable event occur.
- Make a list of assets. First, you need to make a list of all your physical business assets that could be lost in a disaster. These may include:
- Building(s)
- Equipment
- Furniture
- Vehicle(s)
- Product inventory
- Cash
- Financial, customer and other operational data
- Physical documents
- Identify Risk. Determine which types of threats can damage or destroy your assets. Some of the following may not affect your area, but any that could impact the operation of your business need to be considered.
- Earthquake, tornado, tsunami, or hurricane
- An electrical surge or outage
- Fire
- Hacking, viruses, and other cyber attacks
- Rain and flooding
- A spill of hazardous substances
- Terrorism
- Determine the steps you will take to protect your assets from disasters. Take each threat and each asset, then analyze how you can prevent or prepare for the various disasters that might affect those assets.
Personnel Employee safety should be a top priority of your disaster plan. Create a plan for the protection/evacuation of your employees during natural or man-made events that could affect their safety.
- Assign and train employees, based on their personal skills, to be prepared to take specific actions in the event of a physical threat.
- Bring in a professional to train a number of employees to perform CPR and other first aid measures.
- Determine escape routes and safe areas employees should use, depending on the type of physical threat.
- Post a plan of these routes in a prominent place so employees are reminded of them and can know them instinctively.
- Include instructions for turning off utilities such as gas, water, and HVAC systems.
- Assign individuals to help ensure that an escape or safety plan is implemented properly.
- Practice this plan and make sure new employees are trained on it as part of their orientation.
- Post emergency phone numbers for police, fire, poison control, etc.
- Add safety equipment — including first aid kits, Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs), fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, and shelter-in-place supplies — to your facility.
- Maintains an emergency personnel file on each employee with important medical data, and names of emergency contacts.
- Determine the cost involved in expanding coverage to make sure your assets are insured in case of each type of loss.
- Make copies of important printed documents — such as deeds and other legal documents — and put the originals in a safe deposit box at your bank.
- Take photos of all physical assets, put them on a CD, DVD or flash drive, and store it in your safe deposit box. Businesses that have an inventory of their belongings, with pictures, typically receive higher insurance payments from losses and receive them faster.
- If your business is in an area threatened by severe natural storms, consider making building enhancements so your building(s) can better withstand these threats.