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Don’t wait for a calamity. Start planning now to beat events that could destroy your business.
Make sure you update your plan frequently. Your business changes – so do risks. You can’t put a plan in place and assume it will last forever.
Off-the-peg planning isn’t good enough. One size doesn’t fit all. Be sure your plan addresses your particular needs.
Decide what disasters would kill your business – and make sure continuity planning covers these sudden events.
Keep key staff in the loop, with assigned roles aimed at ensuring the business is able to keep operating in sub-optimal conditions.
Source: Robert Lengyel, Brains for Business
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To the rescue
What should businesses consider in their continuity planning? Lengyel says they should address what to do with any type of disruption – short, medium or long term – and should include a wide range of contingencies. For example, employees may be able to work on computers from home and use mobile phones to communicate, a system used successfully in recent times to keep Bangkok’s finance sector operating when political unrest and floods paralysed the city.
According to Lengyel, discovering how long disruptions will last is essential. Aside from working from home, planning for long disruptions may include sharing another business’ premises and talking to banks to ensure that, should glitches prevent sending routine payroll instructions, deposits will continue to be made for employees (adjustments can be made later for overtime or other factors).
A key consideration – potentially the most important – in protecting your business from any disruption is to back things up. “I may be stating the obvious,” says Lengyel, “but I’m amazed at how many don’t. I’ve encountered small businesses with everything kept on the boss’ laptop with no back-up. Laptop hard drives fail more often than those on desktops; that’s a fact of life. So, back up data – I can’t say it often enough.” Big companies, he adds, should also not downplay the importance of backing up payroll and other data, with back-ups kept elsewhere.
Key staff should be empowered to make decisions. Common sense is essential, such as not having to seek permission to call the fire brigade. What’s more, continuity planning should include deciding who’ll step in when staff quit or are incapacitated by, say, an influenza epidemic.
The good news is that, as far as the business sector is concerned, most Australian disruptions are short-lived and are usually not life threatening. “They’re likely to be about IT, telecommunications, electrical power or an interrupted water supply,” says Lengyel.
So, while panic is unwarranted, there’s also no excuse for delay. “Set something in motion today,” he urges.
