Any business, big or small, faces many challenges. Some of the biggest challenges are disasters, especially natural disasters. It doesn't matter where your business operates in the world; natural disasters can occur in every corner of the globe. Floods, storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. are the most common types of natural disasters. This is why you are strongly advised to prepare for a natural disaster. According to the Red Cross report, major natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods are so devastating for small businesses that 40% of them are shut down forever by one of them.
So, what is the importance of preparing for small businesses?
Professional impression
Disaster preparedness and disaster recovery plans are often associated with large enterprises and organizations. But are small businesses protected from disasters? Your small business needs a disaster plan, just like any big business. Integrating disaster plans into your system and documenting them can leave a very professional impression on your business. When you become a big business, you will be asked to offer a hundred different things. Tomorrow, your employees will be happy to work with companies that have long thought about it.
Prevent various disasters
Although there is nothing to do with natural disasters, you can do something about the disasters caused by humans and their mistakes. Humans may deliberately damage your property because of embarrassment, reaction to certain unfair treatments, or as a bad business strategy. When you have the right equipment and systems, it is difficult to cause such damage to your business. In most cases, the form of man-made disasters is a fire that burns all important documents for the company and any system that stores valuable customer information.
Employee safety
Preparing for a disaster doesn't always mean you have to maintain business continuity. In fact, another important part of disaster preparedness is the safety of employees. Sometimes you can't immediately tell a problem that may arise. Storms or hurricanes can cause damage to poles and wires. If not properly protected, such damage can result in employee death. In addition, when you are not prepared to face floods, you may end up asking your employees to work and damage their vehicles.
Business continuity
One of the reasons for preparing for opponents is to maintain business continuity. If you live in areas where certain types of natural disasters are common, you must prepare for these disasters before you prepare for other types of disasters. For example, Japanese companies must be prepared for the earthquake and tsunami. In some parts of the United States, the annual tornado is more than the storms of the entire country. When you develop such a disaster plan, you can ensure business continuity even in the event of a disaster.
Continuous business operations are as simple as asking employees to work from home. To achieve this, you might want to migrate all of your data and important business applications to the cloud, so when your company's servers are down, you can ask your employees to work. Another important aspect of continuing your business is because the downside is to back up your data. When backing up, you cannot back up data in just one location. Our idea is to back up your business data every day and move the backup to another location. If your budget allows, you can back up your data in more than two locations.
Quick Reply
An important aspect of disaster preparedness is sharing this knowledge with your employees. You must also update them with any changes you made to the disaster preparedness and recovery plan. For example, if a sudden fire breaks out in your business premises, your employees must know what the first action must be. If your response to a disaster requires them to work from home, you should also ask your staff to install all important business applications, software tools, etc. on their devices. When your employees know exactly what to do in a disaster situation, they can immediately get a response to the bad situation, so you rarely face downtime.
Cost-effectiveness
Disaster preparedness and recovery are not just about preparing for a disastrous situation. In fact, it is also about being able to operate a business and restore business operations with as few resources as possible after a disaster. Companies without disaster plans can also recover from disasters. However, the big difference here is that unprepared companies will have to spend a lot of money and resources to get back up, and companies with plans will continue to operate with minimal effort.
Improve B2B relationships
When your business is temporarily shut down due to a disaster, not only your customers but your business partners will be affected. They may rely on your mission-critical processes, and your absence will cause them to stop operating or find other partners to make them work immediately. On the other hand, if your business is still running after being affected by a disaster, your business partner will be very positive about you. This will help you retain your business partners because they can now trust your professionalism and business seriousness.
in conclusion
In order to prepare your opponent, the first thing you have to do is to change your perception of the whole situation. Many small business owners believe that things like disaster planning are more suitable for large enterprises, or when companies are growing large enough to have multiple branches. They don't realize that when you have multiple locations, it's easier to recover from a disaster than when there is only one location. So start assessing your risk immediately, develop a sound communication plan and document your disaster preparedness plan today.
Orignal From: The importance of small business disaster preparedness
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