If you’re a soloist or very small business you may wonder why you need to have a disaster plan. After all, if anything goes wrong you’re the one who’ll be dealing with it so why borrow trouble?
But there are very good reasons to have a disaster plan in place. Here are 4 of them:
So you know what to do.
When something goes wrong, particularly if it’s a major issue, you’re going to be under a lot of stress. If you already have a disaster plan in place, you don’t need to think about what to do. You can just act and resolve problems far quicker than if you had to consider options first. It also means that for example; if something happens locally and you have to worry about your home AND business, you don’t have to split focus. You’ll have the information you need to look after your business at hand. Then you can concentrate more on your home and family. Without having to worry about your business being wiped out as well.
You know where to go for help.
Your disaster plan should contain a list of people to contact in case of emergencies likely in your area. Then, if there’s an issue you’ll have contact numbers, emails, social media addresses etc at hand. The less time you spend looking up a number, the more time you have to look after your business. It also helps to have a relationship with local services. Then, when you need to contact them, they know who you are. Take advantage of opportunities to get to know local emergency service personnel as well as local IT professionals and anyone else who could be a first point of call in case of an emergency. It may even be worthwhile getting your local police and fire services to audit your business.
So you know what resources you need.
The type of business you’re in will determine the resources you might need in an emergency. For example, if you have hazardous chemicals you’ll need something that can minimize their effects if they’re spilled. If you have a lot of paperwork, books or magazines you’ll need resources to save them if they get wet such as a freezer, wax paper, paper towel etc. If you have electrical equipment you’ll need resources to help dry them out as quickly as possible. Whatever it is that’s necessary for you to run your business, and whatever you have that could cause problems for others should be covered. And if you’re not sure how to handle an issue with mission critical items – it’s better to be researching it when it’s not needed rather than mid-disaster.
And where to find the resources.
Once you’ve listed all the resources you might need to save your business should disaster occur, it’s important to know where to find them. Having a disaster plan that already has several local locations of the resources you might need listed, along with contact details of the managers at those locations will make it easier to get the resources quickly if they’re needed. So make a point of getting in contact when you develop your disaster plan and talk to the experts about what solutions will be best for your business. Then, if something happens you’re both on top of what’s required. It’s important to list several providers for each resource, because the last thing you want is to start making calls and find that the business that provided something critical has moved out of the area or gone out of business.
The whole point of a disaster plan is to make sure that when something goes wrong, you don’t waste time thinking about what to do. Or even worse, that you don’t make things more serious by doing the wrong thing.
