With risks ranging from natural disasters to cyber attacks and human error, businesses have grown to realise the critical importance of disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
In this blog, we look specifically at natural disasters, be it tornadoes, hurricanes or earthquakes. What steps is business taking to ensure minimal disruptions due to these unforeseen events?
In short, a business continuity plan (BCP) is a document that consists of the critical information an organisation needs to continue operating during an unplanned event.
A business continuity plan not only preserves the company’s health and reputation but also decreases the chances of costly outages and significant operational downtime, which shoot up even more dramatically during catastrophic times.
Consider and include the following steps in your business continuity planning to minimise the aftermath of environmental disasters on your business.
- State the critical activities of the business and identify which system and processes can be affected and must be maintained during natural disasters
- Make provisions for any environmental factors that could cause massive business disruptions.
- Prepare a disaster recovery strategy in the eventuality that a small or large-scale disaster strikes in your area of business.
- Place alternative courses of action in the case of a prolonged power outage, operational loss, property damage, and other such scenarios.
- Restore multi-channel communication at all levels of the organisation and among stakeholders, from internal staff to vendors
- Challenge your leadership team to play out the worst-case scenarios, and how to address them. For example, if your offices, stores and operations have to shut down for several days or weeks following a disaster, how will your business cope?
- Plan out possible responses and devise remote access to support affected operations and continue conducting business as usual
- Ensure the participation of executive and staff across various departments to provide oversight and help to safeguard that the BCP is regularly updated.
- Designate a disaster preparedness and recovery team tasked with creating, reviewing, assessing, and modifying the plan that will dictate your company’s response in disaster scenarios.
- Communicate the disaster recovery and business continuity plan to your staff in the form of training or meeting, and review and update with changes as needed.
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