Unless your business is based somewhere prone to natural disasters like floods and fires, you could easily assume that your company’s chances of being disrupted by any are too remote to warrant planning for. However, you can simply never be certain when or if such an emergency will happen, so you need to be prepared with a natural disaster recovery plan.
That’s why you should start prepaing it now – especially as, according to one startling statistic reported by CNBC, nearly 40% of small businesses struck by a disaster close permanently as a result. We would imagine that the vast majority of those did not have a natural disaster recovery plan in place to help then with the disaster hit.
Natural disaster recovery plan: 5 things to do now
Store your company’s crucial records in the cloud
With some especially disconcerting changes in the weather, like torrential rain that threatens flooding, you could receive advance notice enabling you to collect important paperwork before fleeing the office.
However, other disasters, like fire, can strike without warning – potentially risking you losing the likes of invoices, tax returns and insurance documentation unless it is all somewhere safe, like the cloud. This would let you simply re-download all of the data as your business gets back up and running.
Keep employees, vendors and customers in the loop
Your business isn’t just an island; many people outside the business could heavily depend on it. Therefore, before a natural disaster has a chance to strike, you should figure out how, if it did, you would reach out to your workers and critical customers as well as vendors from which you source products. Make sure you have up-to-date contact details for all of these people – and store those details in a way that would let you access them from any location.
Establish a continuity plan
This would be about ensuring that, if a natural disaster does beset your business, you can – as far as practically possible – continue running it without customers and clients easily being able to tell that anything has gone awry.
Key to this would be identifying your company’s essential operations and how they should be run during the disaster recovery phase. Implementing unified communications (UC) for your corporate telecoms system, for example, could form a major part of your disaster recovery planning.
Conduct a threat analysis
Where exactly your business is physically based could affect how threatening certain types of natural disaster are to your commercial success. So, an office based in a valley or close to sea level might be vulnerable to flooding, while hurricanes could be an issue if you are US-based.
Launch a ‘test run’ of your natural disaster recovery plan
It would be wise for you to do this once you have trained your employees in what actions they should take in the event of an actual disaster. It would also be ideal to have a loyal customer and vendor who could serve as test subjects when you do embark on a drill, as you should regularly.
Watch out for unexpected issues that could emerge as a result of your natural disaster recovery processes. If those entail a digital approach, don’t underestimate potential cyber attacks; only 2% of small-business owners in one CNBC survey deemed these the most critical issue they faced.
