Business Continuity Plans: A Business Owner's Best Friend in an Emergency

In the event of a natural disaster, there are a lot of things that you worry about. Your mind wonders of the safety of your family and friends. You are concerned with your home and property. Yet, if you are a business owner, your worries are quadrupled. Will you have a lot of property damage? Can you continue to operate? Have you considered having a continuity plan?

A business continuity plan basically outlines the vital functions of your organization that need to be ale to operate even in the event of a natural disaster. Functions such as payroll or disbursements may need to operate in order for employees or clients to be paid. There are several ways to do a continuity plan. However, you must be sure that the plan assumes that there has been a disaster and your employees are unable to get to their workstations for a minimum of two weeks.

The first thing to plan is how you will contact key employees. The idea is to create and maintain a phone tree that can be distributed to the directors or supervisors. Your payroll manager, claims adjuster, and maintenance supervisors are among those who need to be included. Then ask yourself how many of your employees have the ability to work from home. Do they have access to your server? If you have employees whose positions can be performed from home, what will they need to be able to work from home? Is there any special equipment or software that will be needed?

You may also want to assign special tasks. One person that is responsible for maintaining a copy of important electronic folders and files, another person that will initiate the phone tree. Tasks should be tailored to fit the needs of your organization and make sure you have back-ups in place just in case these people are unavailable.

Some organizations have developed "fly-away" kits. These are packets of your organization's key information along with instructions for employees in the event of an emergency. Depending on the size of your organization you may want to create more than one kit. The kits can be created by department, building, or division. The most important thing to remember about fly away kits is that they must be kept off-site in a safe place. You may have a safety deposit box, or a host company that you trust to get you the information when needed.

Business continuity plans are a great tool for ensuring that your most important services and functions continue to operate no matter what life and the elements may throw your way.