SMALL BUSINESSES MUST BE PREPARED FOR DISASTERS

“Small businesses are particularly vulnerable during disasters,” said Diana McClure, Institute for Business & Home Safety business resiliency manager. “Statistics show that, of the small businesses that are forced to close due to a disaster, at least one in four never reopens. The reality is probably higher than that, because most statistics just cover the first two years, and some businesses hang on for two to five years before they give up.”

The IBHS defines a disaster for a small to mid-sized business as that point in time after the ‘cause’ when a small business cannot provide its customers or clients with the minimum level of goods and services they need and expect, or an event that shuts down or severely disrupts delivery of products

and services essential to the business and its clients.

“That event can be a natural disaster, an intentional or unintentional human-caused incident, a technological failure, pandemic flu or high absenteeism (no matter what the cause), or a product recall,” McClure said. “A loss is a loss, whatever the cause. The business continuity planning process and disaster preparedness methodology are basically the same no matter what the cause of the interruption.”

The IBHS offers the following do’s and don’t to small businesses during the business continuity planning process:

Do the following

1. Vulnerability Assessment: think about what might threaten your business — whether a natural, man-made or technological incident — and what the consequences might be.
 
2. Mitigation: determine what you can do ahead of time to minimize or eliminate the damage or disruption that could occur as a result of an event — to people, property (building, contents, inventory) and business operations.

3. Emergency Response: create procedures for effective response, i.e., plan your action steps to get through the chaos immediately following an event, including your methods of communication.

4. Disaster Recovery: have procedures in place for recovery of IT systems and data.

5. Business Continuity: plan for resumption of your critical business functions and processes.