Tag: business continuity

If you are like most business owners and employees in America, your company is somewhere on the line between “still shut” to “fully operational.” Many of your employees heading back to work, even if they are healthy, may be struggling with finances, transportation, and home schooling. These are unsettling times, in large part because the pandemic was so totally unexpected.

“Who would ever have guessed we’d have a pandemic?!”

If you watch the news, you’ve probably heard that statement a few times. But what I have heard hanging around online with emergency managers goes a little differently.

“Every good business continuity plan does have “pandemic” on its list of threats!”

Of course, just being on the “list of threats” doesn’t mean it gets included in the plan with full details. Still, having planned for a half-dozen or so of the most LIKELY threats puts your business on much stronger footing when ANY disaster hits.

So while we’re all dealing with heading back to work, it makes sense to once again revisit . . .

The role of emergency preparedness in the workplace.

Here at Emergency Plan Guide we address preparedness for small business in about 25% of our Advisories. We included a book on emergency preparedness for small business in our Neighborhood Disaster Survival series.

We think that business has the potentially most important role of all in improving community-wide resilience! You can click here to read more about why we think that.

Right now, however, businesses need to get their people back to work.

Part of heading back to work includes updating the business continuity plan.

We revisited our own Business Continuity Plan Checklist to help you with that update.

How to use the Business Continuity Plan checklist.

The full checklist is simple. It consists of just 20 steps. The first one is to go through the list and give each step in your current plan a “grade” as to how completely that step has been done. (We include a few hints in a couple of pages of accompanying notes.)

I’d print out several copies and share with selected leaders or senior managers. Have each person grade the company plan separately. Then get together and compare notes. This may be an eye-opening experience!

The checklist is a tool, not a plan.

It can serve two purposes. First, it can help you identify weaknesses in your existing continuity plan. Second, if you don’t have a plan yet, it may give you a push to get started.

You can download the full Checklist here and have it ready to go on Monday.

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide team

P.S.  Our country has been severely shaken by an emergency most people hadn’t planned for. If ever there were a time to take another look at the value of your business continuity plan, this should be it. Of course, planning doesn’t keep bad things from happening. But planning can help get you through unexpected events. This is an important time.

Remember the movie “Sully”? Talk about emergency response!

Sully tells the story of the emergency landing of a commercial airliner on the Hudson River in New York in 2009. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger brought the plane down on the water after engines were lost when the plane hit a flock of geese.

Two great moments from the film.

The day after the movie we used it at our neighborhood meeting to highlight crisp and clear emergency radio communications.

Remember when Sully was asked if he wanted to attempt a landing at Teterboro (NJ), and we all knew that it was just too far given how low they were, how they were losing altitude, how the motors wouldn’t re-start, etc.?

Sully responded to the complicated situation and to the question with just one word: “Unable.”

The movie had another wonderful moment that inspired me to write. At the last minute, after Sully had checked the entire sinking plane twice to be sure no passengers were left, he made his way back up to the cockpit. He grabbed a clipboard, then turned and jumped out of the plane.

I don’t know what that clipboard had on it.

But it was obviously important. And since everything he and co-pilot Stiles had done so far was “by the book,” grabbing that clipboard was obviously on his list.

And thus today’s Advisory.

If YOU have to evacuate your office or workplace, what would YOU take with you?

Do you have a list? Below is one you can start with. I say “start with,” because obviously every business setting is slightly different.

But every business, no matter how big or small, has certain legal obligations to its employees.

And when the business needs to restart after the evacuation, in the same location or in a different one, it will need certain vital information. Your list needs to have your company’s vital info on it.

If you would like a full-size copy of the list, click here.

Action Item: Build a customized list.

Again, I recommend that you use this list only as a start. Take the time at your business to build a customized list. Some thoughts:

• Keep it to one page! Use big print, simple language and the words you use in YOUR business.
• You may want one list for employees and a different list for management.
• Be sure employees keep their list handy/visible at all times.
• You may want to assign certain employees as monitors to be sure certain areas of the office or workplace get evacuated.
• You may also want to add to certain lists instructions about systems or machinery that need to be SHUT DOWN in the case of an evacuation.

We all use lists for everyday activities. But they work particularly well in the case of an emergency, when people can be rattled and in a hurry. Put some time into building your “What to take” list for your business, and you’ll feel and be safer.

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

P.S. The list, and this Advisory, assume you have a more comprehensive Business Continuity of Business Continuation Plan. If you haven’t really started to build one yet, sign up for our Advisories, because we’ll soon be announcing the 2018 version of our Guide to a Simple Business Continuation Plan.

Just a month ago we exposed some “lies” about FEMA coming to the rescue in an emergency.

Today it’s the turn of employers, and the lies they tell you and themselves.

The biggest lie?

“In an emergency, we’ll just work from home.”

(Ha, ha! When you hear that, do you laugh along with me?)

It’s not that working from home is impossible. Many of us do it, some on a regular basis.

The ridiculous part is thinking that in a disaster you can save the business by working at home without having designed an emergency plan to do it.

Granted, every company is unique. But when it comes to operating by working at home, your company needs to have thought through and come up with answers to some essential questions.

Here are 7 of the issues you’ll want to consider beforehand.

1 – Who makes the decision? Who will decide that there is a disaster and that employees should stay home?

Not every disaster is as dramatic as a hurricane or earthquake. Something as simple as a construction bridge collapse or partial power outage might not make the emergency airwaves, but still could mean your business is shut down. Who makes the call? (And how does the word get out to every employee?)

2 – Who assigns roles? How will employees be notified about the disaster, who should be working from home that day, and who should be planning to take the day off?

And will it be with or without pay?

Not every employee may need or be able to work from home. But to counter concerns about what’s fair, employees need to know in advance what emergency policies are, how they will be activated – and how that will impact their particular job.

3 – What functions need to continue? A company that’s prepared may be able to limp along for some time before it experiences serious damage. Which functions are vital for that interim period?

You’ll only know the answer to this question if you plan ahead. That planning will identify jobs that can be performed by employees working at home and will determine what resources they need to perform them.

Your planning will also identify which jobs need to be able to be performed by more than just one person – i.e., where cross-training is called for.

4 – What resources do we need? Doing research, drafting a report or even responding to business emails or calls may be easy for an employee on the road or working at home.

Other jobs, however – such as customer service, accounting, project management, etc.— may be difficult if not impossible for an employee who doesn’t have full access to company files, the right software and hardware, appropriate communications lines and phones, and a stable internet connection with plenty of bandwidth.

Which employees would need these resources to be able to keep YOUR company afloat? Who will pay to have these resources in place, or put in place?

5 – What security will be required?

It’s relatively easy to control security within your organization. This can include restricting entrance to certain areas of the plant, restricting access to different areas within the company network, restricting what people can download and/or take home with them.

In an emergency, information may need to be accessed or manipulated at many different locations, all of them away from the office. Electronic files may need to be shared; paper files may end up being transported in private vehicles; laptops and tablets may be put to use in coffee shops or who knows where.

What level of security do you need to consider to safeguard your operations (and, perhaps, to meet legal requirements)?

6 – Will employees be accountable? During the regular workday, it’s pretty clear who is working and who is goofing off.

Employees working at home may need to track their own hours and progress, actively check in, and make the decision when to call for assistance or approvals. Understanding employees’ level of self-reliance will determine, in part, whether or not they belong on the “work-at-home emergency response team.”

7 – What about Plan C? While working from home may seem to be a reasonable Plan B, back-up to an anticipated power outage or short-lived storm, by definition a disaster causes “great damage or loss of life.” The “work from home” Plan B may not be adequate!

What if a number of your key employees have had to evacuate their entire families and are not at home at all? What if employees are at home, but power is out there just as it is at the downtown office? What if employees are safe at home but your entire office, and all the files the employees need to connect to, are still standing in 12 inches of floodwater?

Plan C can take different forms.

• Your Plan C might start, for example, with your committing some key operations and/or data to “the cloud,” which would make them accessible from anywhere by those displaced key employees. I found this overview of how small businesses might use the cloud for disaster recovery, from Network World.
• It might include a contractual arrangement with a disaster continuity company to replace or restore your flood-damaged equipment within 24 hours. Agility Recovery Solutions, a company we’ve followed and written about for several years, specializes in recovering four areas for small business: office space, power, communications, and computers. (Check out their videos.)
• Or Plan C might even require a service that is prepared to set up – or continually maintain – an off-site back-up office that mirrors your daily operation (a so-called “hot site”), where key employees could simply walk in and sit right down to work. You can get a good description of hot, warm and cold sites here.

As you may have gathered by now, Plan C could become costly! But . . .

If your Plan C keeps the business going, when otherwise it would collapse . . .

— well, then, you really must consider it.

This article is not meant to be a complete program for business continuity planning.

It’s goal is simple — to dispel the “myth” that working from home is an adequate back-up plan.

For most businesses, working from home will be a partial solution at best. Even then, it will require some serious pre-planning.

So don’t let your employer – and if that’s you, don’t let yourself! – be fooled by thinking, “We’ll just work from home.”

Virginia Nicols
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

As they say on TV, “Watch this space.”  We’ll be back with another “lie” very soon! (It you don’t want to miss it, sign up below to get all our Advisories!)

Last week we attended a business expo: 1,000+ people talking, laughing, and sharing their business ideas. Energy and American ingenuity on display!

We figured these people wanted their business to succeed, so we offered a couple of quizzes to get a conversation started about Emergency Preparedness. As you can imagine, results were mixed.

• Some people (10%) took one look at us, saw the word “Emergency,” and shouldered their way past. Not interested, or threatened.
• A few (5%) grabbed the quiz and proceeded to show off how well they and their businesses were prepared. They were enthusiastic!
• Most (85%) came out with a version of the same thing: “Oh, I know I should be doing something, but . . .” (They usually said this with a shrug and a weak smile.)

Do these reactions sound familiar?

They should. As we’ve reported before, more than 60% of small businesses have no plan for emergency preparedness or response. In this crowd of very small businesses – many being operated out of home offices – apparently things were even worse.

Familiar doesn’t mean good. The impact of an emergency on a business with no plan is just plain dreadful. Historically, in nearly half the cases,

1. The business shuts down and never reopens.
2. Employees lose their income.
3. The owner loses his or her income and the entire investment.

Here’s our answer – and our commitment.

At Emergency Plan Guide we research and write about all aspects of preparedness, focusing on three main groups of people: families, neighborhoods and business.

Naturally, there is overlap. A family that is prepared can be an inspiration to neighbors. A neighborhood response group can attract resources to benefit many. A prepared business can stay afloat and support its families and the wider economy.

So, our Advisories and our articles and books strive to meet the needs of each of these groups. But . . .

We think the small business community is most often overlooked.

Resources for the small business seem to fall into two categories – free government websites and programs, and commercial business continuity services including insurance.

All of these have plenty of excellent information, in fact, page after page of it.

And there’s the problem. The typical small business owner is already overwhelmed!

So, here at Emergency Plan Guide . . .

We present basic business continuation information in small, easily digestible bites.

One of our favorite business tools is a simple, one-page flyer that lists 7 things you can do at work to improve preparedness. The list could be used to develop a full-blown preparedness plan, or it could be used, just one question at a time, to start informal conversations around the lunch table or at a staff meeting.

However you want to use it at your business, feel free. You can get your copy of the flyer here and take a look at how you want to proceed.

Disclosure: Yes, we know this one-pager is awfully lean. We’ll take a look at each item in more detail in coming months. The main thing is for you and your business to get started!

Planning for emergencies will save lives and jobs. There’s no time for planning or training once a disaster strikes.

Virginia and Joe
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

Small business owners sometimes confuse emergency preparedness with workplace safety as required by OSHA. Click to get our Advisory that gives more info on OSHA and its limitations.

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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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!