How Prepared is Your Business for a Natural Disaster

Natural disasters can come in many different forms. Extreme weather including hurricanes, tornados and floods can put your business at risk. Having a disaster plan in place can be the difference between keeping you employees and business safe. The key parts of a disaster recovery plan is securing your operations, your technology and of your course your most important asset, your people. You can never be too prepared when it comes to your employees and business and the more you can prepare for the unknown, the better off you’ll be.

The goal of your disaster plan should be to keep your employees safe, keep your operations going and support your customers. Here are a few things to consider when developing your disaster recovery and business continuity plan.

Create a plan and let people know the plan. This might be the hardest step. Put together a good team to help determine what you need to keep your business safe. Once you have a plan in place, it’s not enough to just have it. Make sure you communicate the plan with your staff. People need to know where emergency kits are, how to access data remotely and how to exit the building.

Test the plan. Again, having a plan just doesn’t cut it. You need to make sure it’s tested. Make sure you can communicate with your staff when you’re not in the office. Make sure each person knows their role and what they’re supposed if something were to happen. A lot of businesses will even do fire drills with their technology to make sure their data is accessible after it goes down.

Have a clear communication strategy. Communication is key during a disaster. Not only do you need to be able to communicate with your employees and vendors, but you need to communicate with your customers. How will you let your customers know that you’re still available and up and running? Do you have a way to communicate through phones, emails and social media? Letting customer know you’re operating but maybe at a reduced staff or resources, can help create transparency in serving them. Making sure employees all know which line of communication will be used the most will also help.

Backup your data. This is important for your operations. Make sure you have backups in place for data across your business. Having copies in multiple locations can ensure that you can access our data when you need to. Cloud solutions and co-location solutions can be a great additional to your business. Make sure you test your backups to make sure it’s recoverable. And if your data needs to be accessed differently in the event of a disaster, make sure your employees know where to go.

Protect physical technology in your office. In the case of an emergency, make sure have things in place to help protect your technology. Making sure you have surg protectors and back up batteries for your network equipment. Some businesses even have back up generators. In the event of floods, make sure your cords and technology are up off the floor. In the case of tornados and hurricanes, make sure your technology is away from the windows.

Have a remote work strategy. This is something that has evolved tremendously in the past couple of years due to covid. Businesses have changed some of their business model to allow people to work remotely. If your business has not shifted in that direction, you may need to revisit this in case of an unplanned event. Making sure your staff has laptops and a way to communicate and access data outside the office is key.

Train your employees. A good plan never works if people don’t know their roles and responsibilities. Making sure your employees are trained on how to use the technology to keep your business up and running is the difference between losing revenue during a disaster and not. Also making sure your employees know how to get out of the office can help ensure everyone stays safe.

Don’t know where to start with your disaster and business continuity plan or maybe you have one but you haven’t visited in a while? Invicta Partners is here to help start a conversation and provide industry standard recommendations. Reach out to us today at 423-664-8700 or email us at sales@invictamsp.com