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 you operate your business; Natural disasters are possible in every part of the planet. Floods, storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. are among the most common types of natural disasters. That is why it is highly recommended that you have adequate preparation for a natural disaster. According to the Red Cross, major natural disasters like earthquakes and floods are so detrimental to small businesses that 40% of those affected by one go out of business forever.

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 integrated 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. Plus, your employees will also be happy to work with a company that thinks long term.

Prevention of Diverse 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 bad business tactic. When you have the right team and system in place, it’s hard to do such damage to your business. In most cases, man-made disasters take the form of a fire that can burn down 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 maintaining 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. Plus, when you’re unprepared for a flood, you can end up calling your employees into 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, then other types of disasters. For example, a company in Japan will have to prepare for an earthquake and 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 such disasters, you can ensure the continuity of your business even when disaster strikes.

Ongoing 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 can’t back up data to a single location. The idea is to back up your business data every day and move the backup to another location. If your budget allows, you can back up data to even more locations than two.

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 on your company premises, your employees need to know what the 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 is 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 still 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 depend 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 instantly. On the other hand, if your business continues to operate despite a disaster, your business partners will have a very positive impression of you. This will help you retain your business partners, as they can now trust your professionalism and serious 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 larger businesses or when a business has grown 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 when you have a single location. So start assessing your risks today, create a strong communication plan, and document your disaster preparedness plan today.