The Importance of Disaster Preparedness for a Small Business
Any business, whether small or large, faces many challenges and some of the biggest challenges come in the form of disasters, especially natural ones. It doesn’t matter where in the world your company operates; natural disasters are possible in every part of the planet. Floods, storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. They are among the most common types of natural disasters. That is why it is highly recommended that you have the proper preparation for a natural disaster. According to the Red Cross, major natural disasters like earthquakes and floods are so damaging to small businesses that 40% of those affected by one go out of business for good.
So what is the importance of preparing for disasters for small businesses?
A professional impression
Disaster preparedness and recovery plans are often associated with large businesses and organizations. But are small businesses protected from disasters? Your small business needs a disaster plan just as much as any large business. Having a disaster plan built into your system and documented gives a very professional impression of your business. When you become a big business, you can be audited for hundreds of different things. In addition, your employees will also be happy to work with a company that thinks long term.
Prevention of Miscellaneous Disasters
While not much can be done about natural disasters, something can be done about human-caused disasters and their mistakes. A human may cause damage to his property on purpose as a result of jealousy, reaction to some unfair treatment, or as a poor business tactic. When you have the right equipment and system in place, it is difficult to cause such damage to the business. In most cases, man-made disasters take the form of a fire that can burn all of a company’s important documents and any systems that store valuable customer information.
employee safety
Preparing for a disaster doesn’t always mean you have to maintain business continuity. In fact, another important part of disaster preparedness is the safety of your employees. Sometimes, you can’t instantly tell what could go wrong. A storm or hurricane can cause damage to power lines and poles. If not properly protected, this damage can result in the death of your employees. Also, when you are not prepared to deal with a flood, you may end up calling your employees to work and damaging their vehicles.
business continuity
One of the reasons to be prepared for disasters is to maintain business continuity. If you live in a region where certain types of natural disasters are common, you should prepare for these first and then for other types of disasters. For example, a company in Japan will have to prepare for an earthquake and a tsunami. In some parts of America, there are more tornadoes each year than there are storms in the entire country. When you have a plan for these types of disasters, you can ensure business continuity even when disaster strikes.
Continued business operations can be as easy as asking your employees to work from home. To make this possible, you may want to move all your important business data and applications to the cloud, so that when your company’s servers are down, you can ask your employees to work. Another important aspect of continuing your business despite major disasters is backing up your data. When it comes to backup, you cannot back up data to a single location. The idea is to backup your business data every day and move the backup to another location. If your budget allows, you can back up data to even more than two locations.
Fast answer
An important aspect of disaster preparedness is sharing this knowledge with your employees. You should also update them with any changes you make to your disaster preparedness and recovery plan. For example, if a flash fire breaks out within your business premises, your employees need to know what their first course of action should be. You should also ask your employees to have all the important business applications, software tools, etc. installed on their devices if your response to a disaster is to ask them to work from home. When your employees know exactly what to do in the event of a disaster, they can get an instant response to a bad situation, so you face virtually no downtime.
cost efficiency
Disaster preparedness and recovery is not just about being ready to handle a disastrous situation. In fact, it’s also about being able to run the business and recover business operations after a disaster strikes with as few resources as possible. A business without a disaster plan can also recover from a disaster. However, the big difference here is that the unprepared business will have to spend a lot of money and resources to get back on its feet, while a business with a plan will continue operations with minimal effort.
Improved B2B relationships
It’s not just your customers, but also your business partners who are affected when your business temporarily closes due to a disaster. They may be depending on you for their mission-critical processes, and your absence may cause them to halt operations or find another partner to get things up and running in no time. On the other hand, if your business continues to operate despite a disaster, your business partners will get a very positive impression of you. This will help you retain your business partners, as they can now rely on your professionalism and seriousness with business.
Conclusion
To prepare for disasters, the first thing you need to do is change your mind about the whole situation. Many small business owners think that things like disaster plans are better suited for large companies or when a business has grown large enough to have multiple locations. What they don’t realize is that it’s much easier to recover from a disaster when you have multiple locations than it is when you have a single location. So start assessing your risks today, create a strong communication plan, and document your disaster preparedness plan today.
