What To Do In The First 48 Hours After A Disaster Hits Your Company

Owning a business comes with a lot of responsibilities, including hiring the right employees, finding long lasting clients and much more. One very important responsibility is knowing what to do after a disaster strikes your company. The first 48 hours after the disaster occurs is vital to the success of your business and whether or not it will be able to survive what occurred. In today’s post, we will discuss what you need to do in the first 48 hours after a disaster hits your company, whether man-made or natural.

First 48 Hours Meaningless Without BCP

If your company does not have a business continuity plan in place, then the first 48 hours following a disaster do not matter. You need to have a business continuity plan in order to ace the first 48 hours after a disaster strikes your company. To go with the business continuity plan, you need to designate emergency response teams and property management teams that will run the business after the disaster strikes. When the business continuity plan is in place, and teams are designated, consider holding disaster response drills at your place of business to prepare for the inevitable.

The First 24 Hours

In the first 24 hours after a disaster strikes your company you need to activate the building emergency preparedness plan, contact the designated teams and contact a local emergency response company that deals with recovery. You will need to take a head count of every employee at the company and determine if he or she was present when the disaster struck. Have the emergency response company shut-off water and gas to your building after they inspect each floor for structural issues. Activate backup generators, if they already did not activate when the disaster struck.

If the disaster that struck your company was man-made, such as a data breach, you need to take a couple of different steps in the first 24 hours. You need to activate any disaster recovery or emergency recovery plan as outlined in your business continuity plan, contact designated teams, move data to a secure, off-site location and begin to notify those affected.

The Second 24 Hours

During the second 24 hours of a disaster striking your company, especially a natural disaster, you need to continue with recovery efforts. If you need to notify clients or employees of any issues at the business from the disaster, begin to do so. Make sure your building is safe to go in before sending employees in there to remove some of their personal items and other important documents. Only provide employees and clients with pertinent information as misinformation can lead to mass confusion.

In a man-made disaster, such as a data breach, you need to begin contacting clients whose information might have been stolen within the first 48 hours after the disaster hit your company. This will give them the opportunity to perform damage control themselves. If you have not already switched to a secure, off-site server, move all the data there now to avoid any other breaches until the original server is fixed.

As you can see, the first 48 hours after a disaster hits your company is very important. Be sure you are prepared for those first two days with drills and reviewing the business continuity plan.

10 Components of a Rock Solid Business Continuity Plan

When you create a business continuity plan, you combine various plans into one plan so all of it can be accessed at the same time should a man-made or natural disaster strikes your company. The plans combined into one include crisis management, emergency response, and disaster recovery planning. In this post, we will discuss the 10 components of a rock-solid business continuity plan so your company is prepared for a disaster.

1. Identify and Prioritize Critical Business Functions. Identify and prioritize critical business functions that your company cannot afford to lose. These should include a lost market share, damage to your brand, legal consequences, and failure of your products.
2. Determine Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) for Critical Assets. The plan must include RTOs for all critical assets, while also taking into account the reduced or lost functionality of People, Process, Plant and Technology (PPPT) due to the disaster. People are employees or contractors. The process includes functions or formulas. Plant refers to buildings, warehouses or transportation. Technology includes phones, faxes, computers and measuring equipment.
3. Establish Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). The plan should establish RPOs for all critical data and/or applications. These RPOs help backup data so it can be restored to a specific point should a disaster strike.
4. Conduct Comprehensive Risk Assessment on all Properties. Your company must conduct a comprehensive risk assessment on all of the properties it owns and operates. Some companies go as far as running through every conceivable disaster from a flood from a broken pipe to nuclear war.
5. Create Succession Plans. One of the most important parts of a rock-solid business continuity plan is the creation of succession plans. A disaster could leave your company without upper-level management because they are missing, deceased, or stuck in another location. A succession plan can be activated to put someone else in charge for a set timeframe to make important decisions.
6. Backup Strategy for Technology That is Tested. Any backup plan you have for the company’s technology must be tested on a regular basis to ensure it works properly. Some companies that rely solely on data to turn a profit tend to test their backup plan on a daily schedule.
7. People. This seems pretty obvious, but some companies tend to leave people out of their business continuity plans. To add people to the plan, think along the lines of planning for a pandemic disaster that could affect your business.
8. Training is Present. Some of the best business continuity plans are ones that can be activated well in advance of a known disaster, such as a hurricane. For this to be effective, your company will need to train the employees chosen for the crisis management team and the disaster recovery team so they know what to do in the event of a disaster.
9. Emergency Response Plan. The business continuity plan must include a section that deals with emergency response for fires, floods, terrorist attacks, data breaches, contamination and much more.
10. Crisis Management Plan. Your company’s BCP also needs a crisis management section that handles event escalation response that can deal with physical and non-physical impacts of the disaster. This section should also discuss and outline the Incident Command System.

The 10 items in this post should be included in every business continuity plan if you want it to be rock solid. Take a look at your company’s plan today to make sure it has all 10 of these items and make changes where necessary.

Top 10 Things to Consider Before a Disaster Hits Your Company

When disaster strikes, either man-made or natural, your business will either be prepared or in the dark. As a business owner or upper-level manager, take it upon yourself to prepare your business prior to a disaster striking. In this post, we provide you with the top 10 things to consider before a disaster hits your company so you can be as prepared as possible.

1. Designate a Crisis Management Team. You must designate members of your company as part of a crisis management team. This team will be responsible for providing other employees, clients, stakeholders and ownership updates on operations following a disaster striking your company. Also, designate a spokesperson for the group.
2. Establish an Outside Telephone Number. The second thing to consider is establishing an outside telephone number for your employees. The number should be based out of your company’s area code in the event that the disaster knocks out phone lines.
3. Regularly Update Employee Contact List. You should update your employee contact list as often as possible, maybe even once per month. Information that should be updated includes employee phone numbers (home and cell), home address, email addresses and emergency contact information. Make sure every department head has a copy of the list on their phone by saving it in their email.
4. Perform a Thorough Review of Company Insurance Policies. Management should perform a thorough review of company insurance policies on an annual basis. This includes reviewing what type of coverage the policies provide for man-made and natural disasters that could strike.
5. Create an Evacuation Plan. If the disaster is known about in advance, such as a hurricane, have an evacuation plan in place. Have employees bring their laptops, cellphones, tablets, and PDAs. Provide employees with a time to check-in with the company via email or phone.
6. Prepare for a Need for Counseling. Should a disaster strike your business, employees might need counseling if co-workers were severely hurt or killed. Consider starting a relationship with a counselor or agency prior to a disaster striking your business so they can be contacted and on-site as soon as possible.
7. Backup Company Data Off-Site. Prior to a disaster, it is a good idea to backup company data off-site. Whether this is cloud-based or on servers at a location away from your headquarters, this should be done as soon as possible.
8. Update Disaster Preparedness Plan Annually. Make it a point to update your company’s disaster preparedness plan on an annual basis. If the plan is kept updated, it reduces the likelihood that confusion will ensue after a disaster strikes.
9. Discuss Remote Work. Let your employees know that should a disaster strike your business, it will be ok for them to work remotely until everything is back to normal. In fact, make it a point to encourage employees to work remotely after a disaster strikes.
10. Have an Accountability System in Place. A disaster could strike your business without warning. When this happens, people could go missing. Have an accountability system in place prior to a disaster striking your business so it can be activated immediately.

Disasters are nothing to sneeze at, especially when it comes to running a business. The more preparation you do in advance of one striking, the better off your company will be in the days, weeks and months that follow.

Can Your Business be Affected by Wildfires or Drought?

Mother Nature can be one vengeful woman. Storms affect every part of the world on a regular basis, some with plenty of warning and others with little time to prepare. Aside from storms such as hurricanes and tornadoes, people and businesses can also be affected by wildfires and drought. No matter where your business is located, drought can be a yearly occurrence, which could lead to wildfires if people are not careful. Because of these two natural risks, your company should have a business continuity plan in place to deal with wildfires and water shortages.

Water-Dependant Businesses

It is vital for any type of company to have a business continuity plan because it is a document that explains to employees how the company will continue to operate should a disaster or other issue arise. When it comes to droughts or water shortages, companies that are water-dependent should create a business continuity plan should a drought occur. Water-dependant businesses include car washes, farms, nurseries, swim clubs and tourist attractions along lakes and rivers.

What is Water Scarcity?

Water scarcity is another way to say drought, and it is characterized in three ways. Those three characterizations include the physical availability of water; the reputation, or impact on brand value; and regulatory, or water quantity and quality regulations. A company can determine its risk of water scarcity by mapping out individual watersheds near the business. Water risk can also be determined by the geographic location of the company. Some areas of the country have a higher risk of drought compared to others based on weather patterns.

Business Continuity Plan for Droughts

If your company is located in an area that is prone to water shortages, or major droughts, a business continuity plan focused on this topic is prudent to have. The plan does not have to solely be for handling droughts, but this natural disaster should be discussed in the plan. The plan must note how the company can continue to operate during a drought. If the company has emergency water stored in underground tanks, then this should be noted in the plan as well as how to access those tanks.

Wildfires are a Risk for Businesses Too

Wildfires can go hand-in-hand with droughts because of the extremely dry conditions in drought-laden areas. When rain is scarce, trees and the brush become susceptible to catching on fire from the slightest spark. Wildfires can be caused by the negligence of a person, a lighting strike, arson, a vehicle crash and even a building or home catching fire and then spreading. Wildfires, if not contained, can spread to consume thousands of acres of uninhabited land and even established towns or cities. Because of this, your company should have a section of its business continuity plan dedicated to dealing with wildfires. Not only are wildfires a threat to the physical aspect of your business, but also to the health and wellbeing of your employees.

So, if you own a car wash, a tourist spot near a lake, a swim club, a nursery, or other type of water-dependant company, make sure your business continuity plan includes sections dedicated to dealing with droughts and wildfires.