September is National Preparedness Month. While many of the advertisements and promotions you’ll see revolve around personal preparedness (and those are important), we can also do so much more for our businesses and organizations.
The recent fires in Spokane are a stark reminder of how quickly a crisis can escalate. Emergency evacuations, damaged property, and in some cases loss of life don’t come with warnings; they don’t come at convenient times; and while many aren’t preventable, the response and recovery can always be improved.
Consider this month my Preparedness Playbook for your business or organization. It’s broken into three sections: Prevention, Response, and Recovery. By improving each section even a little, you will go a long way to saving property, dollars, and lives.
Prevention
Reduce Hazards: Perils are the bad things we encounter: fires, cyber-attacks, and injured employees are examples. Hazards are those things that increase the likelihood of a peril occurring. In my examples, those might include poor housekeeping, lack of proper computer hygiene (like lack of training or outdated maintenance), and lack of safety equipment.
You can reduce hazards with proper quality control. Constantly audit all those pesky details that we all know are necessary to prevent perils from occurring. The human element of this is normally apathy and speed. In our lack of caring or desire to get things done faster, hazards are overlooked. Don’t let that happen to you.
Questions: How’s your organizational housekeeping? Is everything put away to avoid trips and falls? How about the use of chemicals and personal protective equipment? Has everyone been trained in proper uses? How updated are your policies and procedures, and are they communicated? When was the last time you did an analysis of your technology?
Prevention is the least expensive form of the risk management process. Preventing a peril is always better than being forced to respond and recover from one.
Response
Insurance: I’m sure everyone reading this column has business insurance. The better question is, how confident are you that it’s right?
Insurance is basically sold as a commodity. For most small businesses and organizations, there may not be a dedicated agent. It’s very easy for insurance to be incorrectly written, become obsolete, and fail to respond when it’s needed most.
Insurance is the ultimate response tool, but making sure it’s correct before the peril is critical. While you may fully trust your insurance agent, make sure you’re discussing your most crucial concerns and how they are (or aren’t) covered in your policy.
Strategic Planning: While every business and organization carries insurance, almost nobody has a strategic business continuity plan. This is the “break glass” plan for when the “you-know-what” hits the fan.
This plan – which should be reviewed annually – includes areas around accountability and responsibility; redundancies (especially human ones); crucial contact information; and the location of emergency and life-saving equipment. While this planning may not be the most fun thing to create, it’s essential to quickly and effectively respond to a crisis. Without one, you’re just making things up on the fly.
Questions: When was the last time you had your insurance reviewed by an independent expert not selling you the policy? When was the last time you reviewed your business continuity plan (or do you have one)? Are all your employees trained in First Aid/CPR? Do you have a defibrillator on site? Does everyone know who’s in charge if the owner isn’t there?
Recovery
How Fast Can You Get Back: Days not operating at full strength are expensive. Think of your own business or organization: how much would it cost if you couldn’t operate for two weeks? A month?
Recovery is predicated on how well you’ve put together your prevention and response plans. The better you’ve reduced the hazards, and the more comprehensive and well-communicated your plan, the faster your recovery — saving tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus your employees’ ability to earn income.
You need to understand your minimum recovery time. Determine the minimum amount of time you can be inoperable before it really hurts. Is it three days? A week? A month? One of my clients once told me – it was one hour.
Use reverse engineering to create your Business Continuity Plan. Identify your biggest exposure to perils; analyze the impact and probability of them; set controls into place to better prevent and respond to crises; finance the risk through proper insurance; and then monitor and stay current.
Use this month to commit to your employees and their families, and your customers and clients. Start with creating plans around prevention, response, and recovery, and then put them into action.
It’s not a matter of if a crisis hits you, it’s when. Be ready to hit back.
