As a small business owner, you need to be ready for anything. This isn’t just about employees calling in sick, but about the possibility of disaster in your workplace. There are some disasters out there that can be prepared for, while others come out of nowhere and leave you shocked and shaken up. Smaller businesses find it harder than most to recover financially when there is a disaster, and sometimes the disaster is more than data theft, theft by employee or a crash in the market. Sometimes, the disaster lies within Mother Nature – completely beyond the control of your company.
Every single business – big or small – should have a plan for disasters of all types. Man made disasters can be prevented as much as possible, with companies like Frontline working with you to ensure that your business information and documentation stays safe and secure. A disaster can happen at any time in your business, and as Mother Nature waits for no one and is possibly the most unpredictable beast of all, you can’t always see it coming. However, while you can’t plan for a ‘maybe’ you can plan for something as if it would happen to you. Proper disaster planning not only gives you peace of mind, it ensures that people – and your business – are all safe when disaster does strike. Here are some of the ways that you can prepare your company for disaster.
Get In The Cloud. It doesn’t matter whether your business is under threat from a cyber attack or a hurricane, you need to protect your documentation. Most of the time, businesses are able to keep their information and documents safe, but when a disaster happens, the loss of paper documents can be devastating. Moving these to the online cloud is so important, because digitizing those documents can be the difference between business ruin and continued success.
Plan & Plan Some More. If your business is located in an area that is prone to natural destruction, it may be worth double checking your insurance to make sure that you will be covered in the event of disaster. You should have a myriad of business insurance anyway, but knowing that you’ll be able to recover after a disaster is priceless.
Emergency Budget. As part of your main business expenses, it isn’t a bad idea to ensure that you have emergency funds set to one side to cover several weeks of expenses if disaster takes down your premises. You can have staff working from home – depending on your type of business – and keep their salaries paid by doing this. It also lessens the interruption to your business for clients, especially if you are able to keep up with the work despite the office being out of use.
Disaster preparation isn’t just for people who believe in a bug-out bag being located everywhere that you go. It’s for everyone who believes that they could be at risk from things going wrong.
