Category: Business Contingency Planning

Remember 1982? E.T. had a problem! He’d been accidentally left behind by his family of extra-terrestrials. In the film, he built a communicator that magically reached them through space, and he was able to “go home.”

Today, you won’t have to invent a new device on the spot if communications go down at your business.

VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) has some magical features you may be able to plug into immediately.

Imagine this scenario.

Your business is located in the center of an area where a severe storm has crippled communications. Phone lines are down, cell towers are down, electricity is out.

Your business is “dead in the water!” How long can it survive if customers, suppliers or the bank can’t get through?

VOIP may mean they WILL get through!

Because it is based on the cloud, if you or one of your employees can access the internet from anywhere, you can still conduct business. With VOIP, all you have to do is get online to your account and reprogram your service to allow employees to work from home or from any remote location. For example, with VOIP you can:

• If possible, physically take your phones with you when you evacuate the office and plug them in at a new location.
• Forward the office main line to ring to your personal home or mobile phone.
• Forward lines to home computers to handle voicemail and for softphone (internet) calls.
• Add temporary extra lines to handle a higher volume of emergency calls.
• Add new greetings to let callers know office hours have changed.
• Set up conference or teleconference calls.

Get set up before the emergency.

Naturally, you need to have your plan in advance for re-programming the system in an emergency. And everyone needs to know how to use all the features of the system.

(Consider having everyone work from home from time to time – maybe just a half-day? – to practice.)

There are a number of VOIP services; prices start at 10/mo.; most are around $25/mo. and depend on features, number of lines, number of minutes you need, whether you call internationally, etc. You can check some of them out here: http://voip-service-review.toptenreviews.com/

VOIP has become an important option to consider for business communications and continuity. Check it out for YOUR business.

Virginia Nicols
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

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“I read you loud and clear.”

Every month, on the second Wednesday at 6 p.m., our neighborhood CERT group clicks on their two-way radios and gets ready to participate in the radio drill.

The first check-in takes place at the Division level, when the Division Leader checks with 10 or so Block Captains. It’s a quick call: “Division 5 Leader calling Block Captain 5 Alpha. Do you read?” and a quick answer, “Five Alpha reads loud and clear.” Takes less than 7 minutes.

After the Block Captains check in, the Division Leaders and Special Teams (Search and Rescue, First Aid, etc.) switch to the Community Channel and participate in their own roll-call. Another 7 minutes.

What we accomplish with these radio drills is three-fold:

1. Radios are checked to be sure they are functioning. (If someone forgets to turn the radio off, then when the next month rolls around that radio’s batteries are dead!)
2. Everyone gets practice using the radios, the channel assignments, and the lingo. (It seems easy to say “Five Leader” or “Five Delta” but non-native English speakers, in particular, need to practice.)
3. We get reassurance that our community is intact and participating!

Last year Southern California experienced a 5.3 quake at about 8 p.m. On that evening, CERT group participants grabbed their radios and ran outside to check how neighbors had fared. I stood there in the dark, and soon came the voice of one of my team members, “This is Cheryl, Five Charlie. Is anyone there?” (Protocol slips a bit when there’s a real emergency.)

Cheryl and I were able to discuss our block and ascertain that all was well. I then switched to the Community Channel to check in, and sure enough, other Division Leaders were doing the same thing.

The point is, this simple communications plan worked, worked well, and worked fast. No dialing, no waiting, no ringing, no busy signals, no leaving of messages. Just push to talk.

“I read you loud and clear.”

Take a look at our updated review of Walkie-Talkies.  I think you’ll find it interesting and valuable. And let me know if YOU have Walkie-Talkie stories to share. Til then, “Over and Out.”

Virginia 
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

Are you in charge of Emergency Preparedness meetings?

Do you have a regularly-scheduled Emergency Preparedness meeting for neighbors or co-workers? If so, you can be thankful this topic is “on the radar.” At the same time, if you are responsible for planning and managing the meeting, then you know it takes thought, each month!

I’ve been running or attending neighborhood CERT meetings every single month for about 15 years. During that time our group has had different group leaders, and they are always on the lookout for suggestions to “make the meetings interesting.”

Recently we had a training meeting that seemed to work well. Here’s a description of how we planned for it. I think you’ll find you could put on a meeting like this with very little effort!

A.  Meeting Timing

We hold our meetings the same day and time every month – makes it easy to remember! We limit each meeting to one hour to keep speakers on their toes and attendees from checking their watches.

B.  Meeting Template

I recommend putting together a meeting template so a new volunteer has a track to run on when stepping up to be that month’s meeting planner. An abbreviated version of our template:

1. One month before the meeting – arrange for speaker or select training activity. Announce upcoming meeting at any HOA meetings, in the newsletter, online, etc.
2. One week before the meeting – Distribute invitations via email and/or flyers, arrange for room set-up and audio visual
3. Day before the meeting – Confirm speaker,  confirm arrangements for room and audio-visual, organize handouts and refreshments, send out last meeting reminder
4. At the meeting – Assign first to arrive as “hosts” and/or name tag writers, assign a couple of others as clean-up crew
5. Agenda – Welcome, introduce new members or visitors, present program, acknowledge guest speaker and that meeting’s planning crew, close on time
6. Day after the meeting — Send out thanks, follow up on action items

New to this Advisory — Be sure to add a “Housekeeping” announcement at the beginning of your meeting. Tell people where to find the restrooms, and share “In case of emergency” information: point out at least two exits from the room (doors, windows, behind the stage!) and the location of the nearest fire extinguisher and/or AED.

C.  Meeting Activities

Coming up with something interesting each month takes effort! Naturally, one good source of programs is guest speakers and guest trainers. We have also found that an occasional training video from YouTube can be a great program.

We have also discovered there are some secrets to successful meetings beyond the formal program, however. They include: having name tags and refreshments, having something for everyone to do (for example, change batteries in radios, give a report on their neighborhood), mixing up whole group and small group activities, and adding an element of competition.

Build a collection of Successful Meeting Ideas

So far, I haven’t found any single great source of meeting ideas, and have been forced to develop my own collection. So far, we have published two volumes of meeting ideas!

Have you put on or attended any particularly good CERT meetings lately? Can you share the topic and the activity with everyone? Just drop a description in the comment box!

Thanks for your input.
Virginia Nicols
Your Emergency Plan Guide team

Looking for regular meeting ideas?  Be sure to get our Advisories, and check out our Book of CERT Meeting Ideas.

Family safely reunited, but . . .!

We easily imagine what it’s like for the people who survive a massive storm. We picture family members coming together again, clinging thankfully to each other. We imagine them picking up debris, patching roofs or broken windows, cooking around a makeshift campfire.

But then the news coverage – and our imagination – switches to something else. And we forget that for many of these people the real emergency is just beginning, because they are out of work!

I was struck by this quote from the Alabama study that followed its disastrous April 29, 2011 storm, when 62 separate tornados touched down. The quote reads:

“Instantly, 7,000 people in Tuscaloosa were out of work. . .”

Now out of work.

Take a minute to reflect on the threats faced by your business. You may not be the business owner, but if your livelihood depends on this business, here are some things worth thinking about:

1. What are the most likely threats? Power outage, chemical or material spill, train or truck wreck, computer system sabotage, fire, flooding, earthquake?
2. If the building and business were shut down completely, how long could the business survive before customers would be forced to go somewhere else for service?
3. What business processes could be carried on elsewhere – for example, could some work be done from a temporary office? Could some employees work effectively from home (if they had power)?

How to protect the business?

1. Have you discussed an emergency preparedness plan for the business? This would help you make changes now, before the emergency, that would help get the business back on its legs. A typical emergency preparedness plan includes:
   • Identifying and fixing vulnerabilities in the physical structure of the building or in daily business routines.
   • Identifying the essential business processes that could keep customers satisfied until you could get fully back to work. Often, this is as simple as having a way to let customers know what is going on!
   • Training specific employees to understand and be ready to shoulder special responsibilities in case of an emergency. This could range from grabbing and using fire extinguishers to grabbing and protecting company records.
2. Have you considered recovery actions that will be required after the disaster hits?
   • Where could the business be run from if not from its current site?
   • Which employees would be expected to come back to work, and under what conditions? Do they know and agree to this?
   • Do you have the supplies and tools these employees would need to carry on during the emergency? This might include customer and account lists, computers, office supplies, and cash.

Unfortunately, the statistics on small businesses surviving after a complete shut-down are not good. Even companies with a disaster recovery plan will face a huge challenge. Still, with a plan, they may have a much better chance.

Surely your business deserves that chance.

If you need more information on how to protect your business, check out:

A simple one-page tool:  Seven Steps

And watch for our 2017 Version of the Simple Business Continuation Plan, coming soon!

Consider these three types of fires:

1. Structure fires
2. Vehicle fires
3. Outside fires

Quiz: What’s the most frequent type of fire? Which type is increasing the fastest? Which kills the most civilians?

Answer: From a report cited on the National Fire Protection Association, outside and wildfires are increasing five times faster than other fires! But the most people die in structure fires – some 2,640 in 2011. One structure fire is reported every 65 seconds.

You probably have fire extinguishers at work.  What about at home?

Unobtrusive and handy

Fire in the kitchen!

Last year, at our daughter’s house, we had the occasion to use an extinguisher just like the white one shown here. (This one is in our kitchen; our daughter’s extinguisher was in her pantry.) For some unknown reason, food in the toaster oven caught fire and started smoking. In the excitement, she opened the door – and flames burst out and up, licking against the bottom of the cupboards.

Joe shoved her aside, grabbed the fire extinguisher, pulled the safety pin (had to try twice), and doused everything. What a cloud of white! But while the toaster oven ended up a pathetic shriveled piece of blackened metal, the counter, cupboards and the rest of us were fine with just a little dusting.

The right extinguisher?

Did we check in advance to be sure we were using the right extinguisher? No! But she had the designer model, and it turns out that the typical kitchen model is a BC extinguisher. That is, it is designed to put out fires that may be caused by

• Burning liquids, oil or grease
• Electrical equipment, wiring, appliances

On the other hand, the all-purpose model for the garage is an ABC extinguisher. It is designed to handle:

• Ordinary combustibles like paper, wood and plastics
• Burning liquids, oil or grease
• Electrical equipment, wiring, appliances

In the green zone

Properly charged?

Check the pressure gauge on a regular basis! The arrow needs to be pointing to the green area. In our experience, some extinguishers hold their charge for years, and others lose it more rapidly. It’s like batteries . . .

Conveniently mounted?

It only takes a moment for a fire to catch hold. It’s that moment when you have the chance to act. Mount your extinguisher where it is visible and so you’ll know it is there when you need it. Tucking a loose extinguisher behind the door or in a cupboard will delay your response in an emergency.

The right size?

Small extinguishers may be appropriate for an automobile, but we recommend the larger 3 lb. size for household use. The cost for a good extinguisher starts at about $30 and can go up from there.

Tell us YOUR story about how you have used an extinguisher! The more stories we get and share about how extinguishers have saved property and lives, the more people get out there and get one! Just leave a comment in the reply box!

Are you a homeowner, property owner, remodeler or home builder, or home energy specialist? Take three and one-half minutes to watch this video showing retrofit steps for protecting a home against damage from earthquake and winter storms.

Click image to see 3 minute video on home remodel

The video was posted on YouTube by the Canadian Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) in partnership with Desjardins Insurance.

Most of the steps are simple and would apply to ALL homes, no matter where they are located. As an owner, you could consider having these changes made to your home or rental properties.  As a member of the construction industry, you might want to recommend these changes to customers.

Some of the work you could do yourself, like installing a fire extinguisher. (The video recommends “at least one in every home.” We think you probably need more than one: in the kitchen, for sure, but in the garage, too, or in the laundry room area.)

You would need a licensed professional’s help for some of the other items, like installing a generator or snow melting system along the roof edge.

Even if you aren’t in an area prone to earthquakes, a number of the suggestions in the video will apply, enhancing your home’s security and safety as well as your ability to function in a number of emergency situations. In some cases, making these improvements might even give you a discount on home insurance costs.

If this video is of interest to you, you may also want to review these more detailed home improvement advisories. Whatever you can do to protect your home will help you sleep better at night. Plus, it may help with the resale value!

• Improving Building Safety – Interior
• Improving Building Safety – Chimneys
• Improving Building Safety – Windows

What other improvements do you think people should consider? Drop your suggestions into the comments box below!

Thanks.

Virginia Nicols
Emergency Plan Guide Team

Like maps?

If you are a map fan, check out FEMA’s Map Service Center to see whether you’re in a flood zone. The map is designed for ordinary citizens, but also for real estate and insurance specialists, who can create printouts coordinated with the Digital Flood Insurance Rate Map.

Starting in May, 2013, the map service is being expanded and upgraded. But in the meanwhile, you can do what I did to check out your own home and community. It’s easy!

Check FEMA’s map service.

Here’s the link. www.msc.fema.gov.

Do a “Product Search” by filling in your address. A second screen will come up identifying your general area (county). Click on “View” and be patient as the data loads. Ultimately, you’ll be rewarded with a very small map of your area!

Red arrows point to flood zone markings

You can adjust the scale at the top of the screen. (I changed the 4% to 15 % and that gave me a much better size map, and I could read most of the street names.) You can also click on the “pan” button on the left (looks like a little hand) and move the map around. (Again, be patient since it’s a lot of data and the map re-adjusts slowly.)

Once you’ve found the right area and the right level of detail, search for overlays. In our example, the gray dotted area (left arrow in the illustration) indicates a 500-year-flood zone, and the bright blue color (right arrow in the illustration) indicates a 100-year-flood zone, which means there’s a 1 percent chance of a 1-foot or higher flood in that area in any given year.

How would you be affected?

In the illustration, our home is not in the flood zone. But the blue area happens to be a key highway/railroad overpass/underpass. This interchange is about one mile from our neighborhood, so a flood there would definitely impact our emergency response, particularly if an evacuation were called for.

Check out this resource for your neighborhood, and also for your business or place of work. It’s interesting and good information to have.

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

We’ve added more information about flood insurance. Check it out here.

Where will your driver be when the disaster hits?

Delivering services to homebound seniors

At a meeting last week at the local American Red Cross, we were discussing a new program aimed at preparing the senior community for disaster.

Most of the people in the room represented companies that deliver services to homebound seniors. There were folks from Meals-on-Wheels, SeniorServ, and a whole group of home health care providers.

Home health care staff members drive from home to home to assist their elderly clients. In the case of an earthquake disaster, these drivers will likely be on the road in their car or in the home of a client when the earthquake hits. The drivers will NOT be at their own home, and they will NOT be at their employer’s office.

Homes with few if any resources

These senior clients are people who, by definition, are not self-sufficient. They may be disabled or frail. This means that the driver, caught in the home with the client, will be faced with taking care of the client as well as him or herself.

If the driver is on the road when the earthquake hits, what is her responsibility? To continue on to the client’s home when possible? Return to the office? Or head for home to join the family?

Responsibility of the employer

This situation raises several issues for the employer that need to be addressed through training or investment in appropriate emergency supplies and equipment. Based on the group at the American Red Cross meeting, there was no one correct answer. But everyone agreed that these questions DID deserve consideration, and a positive answer.

1. Do your drivers all have an emergency supplies kit in their vehicle?

2. Does the kit contain enough to share with a client?

3. Are your drivers clear about their responsibility to their clients in the case of an emergency?

4. Do you know how you will communicate with your drivers in an emergency?

5. Do you have a plan for communicating with your clients’ families in an emergency?

Are you an employer with drivers?

What emergency preparations have you made to cover your staff and your customers?  What liability do you feel you carry as the employer?  Please share!

Developing your Business Continuity Plan In-House

If you are the person who has been placed in charge of developing a Business Continuation or Disaster Recovery Plan from in-house, take a deep breath — and then relax.  You won’t be responsible for finding all the things that need to go into your Plan — your co-workers will be providing most of it!

Step One:  Identify a core group of co-workers.

Your first task will be to identify a core group of co-workers – people who are interested in planning, know something about responding to disasters, etc. The members of your core group could come from anywhere within the organization, and may not be from the ranks of management. For example, your team might have someone with medical training, someone with military experience, or someone who is a retired First Responder.  You can work with HR to identify some of these people, or maybe send out a brief email questionnaire, or simply talk it up in the coffee room.  The key is to get people who are interested in the topic, not people who are “assigned” it!

Step Two: Provide your core group with training.

Training may be available locally, in person, as classes offered by the Red Cross or CERT training offered by your City. Training is also available online. Check out the American Red Cross’s Ready Rating program for business, and Citizen Corps Online CERT training. These programs also offer suggestions for procedures and sample forms you may find useful. Dig deeper and review from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) the National Incident Management System and Incident Command System, so your core group will be comfortable communicating with other professional organizations.

People who are genuinely interested will value this training, particularly if the company provides them some time to get it, and recognizes their progress.

Step Three: Now, involve the rest of your co-workers.

With your core group in place, now you can involve others. After all, if you want your co-workers to understand the risks faced by the business, they need to be involved in identifying them.

And if you want to find the best ways to prevent emergencies from turning into disasters, again, just ask your co-workers! They will know more than any outsider about the equipment and materials they use, the state of the building, the potential for fires or floods, and the challenges associated with an evacuation.

The missing piece in most Plans.

We have seen a lot of plans and nearly all of them are missing one key component that dooms them to failure! It is a consideration for the peace of mind of employees regarding their own families. Until that is assured, you cannot count on employees paying attention to their responsibilities at the business! Be sure to include a family communications plan and invest in whatever it takes to make it functional.

Step Four:  Develop the content of the plan.

1. Lay out a schedule for “building the plan,” starting with a series of brainstorming sessions. (Remember the definition of brainstorming: coming up with as many ideas as possible, without any attempt to judge them!)

2. Hold these brainstorming sessions and their logical follow-up sessions. Here are some of the topics you would want to cover. Each could be covered at a different meeting. Some input might even be assessed via email or questionnaires.

a. Identify threats to the business

 b. Rate threats based on likelihood of risks

 c. Rate threats based on impact on the business (hours, days, weeks or longer to recover?)

 d. What can we do to avoid these threats altogether?

 e. What can we do to mitigate/lessen the impact of these threats?

f. What response procedures work best for our business?

 g. Special procedure: How will we manage communications with families of employees?

 3. Document the threats, the avoidance or mitigation measures, and the response procedures that have been suggested.

4. Set out a list of recommendations that result from the brainstorming session.

5. Draft the first version of the Plan.

Step Five: Now, ask for input from outside experts.

Having put together the guts of your Plan, you can be confident that it is meaningful for your co-workers and for your business.  Still, it is important that the Plan pass whatever “official standards” it may be held to.

The next installment of this series will discuss who should be invited to take a look at your Plan before you consider it finished.

Here’s the link to Installment 3 – Validation

If you’re in a hurry to get all this information in one convenient package, check out our free, 6-page Report: Simple Business Continuation Plan. 

Who’s in charge?

The person put in charge of coming up with a business Disaster Recovery or Continuity Plan is often not an expert in the field. In fact, most often in a small business the job is simply “assigned” to someone in the company – someone in IT, or human relations, or facilities management. But “Business Continuation” means a whole lot more than simply saving data, or meeting OSHA requirements. It means keeping the whole organization functioning so you will all be employed six months or a year from now!

Unfortunately, statistics on going out of business as the result of a disaster are not reliable – but it appears that even in the best of cases, your business’ chance of survival after a disaster without a plan are only about 60%. (“Business Continuity Statistics: Where Myth Meets Facts” documents often-quoted reports.)

Typical first step: Hire an expert — but with what result?

Comprehensive Business Continuity Plan — How useful?

The logical first step for the newly-assigned person is to hire a consultant, who IS a specialist. That individual or group submits its proposal, wins the contract, and then gets down to the research necessary to draft “The Plan.” Some weeks or even months later, “The Plan” is submitted.  It may be approved and accepted.

In our experience, this method handicaps the consultant, who faces a dual challenge.  He or she doesn’t know all the subleties of your business operations.  And he or she may be forced to bid on putting a plan together that covers a number of bases without having access to all the factors that will impact the veracity of the plan.  As a result, the needs analysis task is underestimated and the final plan misses some of the subtle but important factors that make the plan meaningful and credible.

If you go the route of seeking bids from consultants, you can help avoid this pitfall by doing some of the homework in advance.  That way when (and if) you bring an expert planner into the organization they start with enough facts to bid realistically on pulling the plan together and are more likely to produce a real working plan that will save both lives and property.

Nevertheless, the result of these challenges is that most outside-developed plans we have seen (and we have seen many of them) are:

√ Very thick and intimidating (to justify the fee?)

√ Complex (to cover all the bases or the rear of the consultant)

√ Filled with jargon and therefore unreadable by the very people the plan is meant to protect!

Result: Plan goes onto the shelf.

Isn’t there a better process? Of course, and particularly for small businesses. Our recommendation is as follows.

Alternative method: Create the plan in-house.

Creating the Plan in-house requires more time and more dedication from the person in charge than simply hiring an outside expert to put it together for you.  And it requires that employees at all levels be involved.

Over the years, we have found some good ways to encourage participation from within the organization — ideas which we’ll be sharing in the next Advisory, and also in a more complete form on our website.

If you’re in a hurry to learn more about the In-House Planning Method, here are links to the next two installments in this series:

• Installment Two – Development
• Installment Three – Validation

And if you know you need to get started right now, find out more about our free 6-page report: How to Build A Simple Business Continuation Plan.