Tag: small business

The more I learn about preparedness, the more I see that genuine security for your family depends on far more than you alone can do. In other words, preparedness takes a village, with every member taking a role.

So as we head into 2020, let’s take a look at some of the options you have to improve your situation and the situation of the people around you, too.

You must take the initiative to keep your family safe.

Here at Emergency Plan Guide we try not to discriminate between young or old, single or married, urban or rural preppers. However, we do aim our outreach to the kinds of friends who are looking for “practical, simple and sensible every-day actions” they can take to become better prepared. (By and large, these friends don’t plan to depend solely on the government or other “authorities.”)

In September, FEMA’s 2018 annual National Household Survey came out. I was interested to see how our preparedness objectives fit in with what the survey reports!

According to the survey (5,000 people across the country), 57% of us have taken at least 3 or more “preparedness actions.”

FEMA identifies six basic preparedness actions.

Below is a list of what FEMA counts as “actions.” How many of these actions did you take in 2019?

1. Gather and store 3-days’ worth of emergency supplies
2. Talk with others about getting prepared
3. Attend a local meeting
4. Seek information on preparedness
5. Participate in a drill
6. Make an emergency plan

Did you take all six actions in 2019? If not, what can you add to your “to-do” list for 2020?

What keeps us from doing all six?

If you read more deeply into the results of FEMA’s study, you’ll discover that of the people interviewed, 97% admitted that at least one disaster could impact where they live – but only 47% of them feel confident that they can prepare effectively.

47%! That’s nearly half! What stands in their way? The study quotes the same “reasons” we’ve heard for years: (1) perceived hassle (2) anticipated cost (3) don’t know exactly what to do.

(When I look at this list, I see “reasons” we give for not doing a lot of things! For example, I can easily apply all three of those reasons to buying or selling a car, changing dentists, applying for a new bank account, etc.!)

Getting more people involved depends on what’s going on in your neighborhood.

If you look back at that list of preparedness actions, you’ll see that half of them can be accomplished by working on your own – but the other half require participation by others! Yup, that the “preparedness takes a village” aspect!

And here’s where Emergency Plan Guide stands out from most other resources. We’ve written community preparedness into every one of the books in our Disaster Survival Series.

You want your neighbor to be ready to help.

After all, that neighbor is likely to be YOUR first responder in an emergency!

The FEMA list cites the value of “talking with others,” “attending local meetings” and “participating in a drill.” Somebody has to manage these – they don’t just happen by themselves.

CERT training, offered by local emergency management office, usually becomes the basis for neighborhood readiness. But the next step requires local community leaders to step up. Our Emergency Preparedness Meeting Ideas book is aimed at those leaders, helping them in planning and putting on educational neighborhood meetings. (This is our best-selling book, by the way!)

What role can you take in 2020 to support your local neighborhood?

If your job disappears, all your personal work may be for naught.

The past several years we have seen whole communities decimated and destroyed by flood, storm, and fire. Even if people escape with their lives, when businesses are destroyed a lot more “goes up in smoke:”

• Employees no long have a source of income.
• Business owners lose their investments.
• Suppliers and advisers lose a client.
• Customers lose a valued product or service.
• The community loses vitality – and tax revenue.

Our book Emergency Preparedness for Small Business helps business owners make plans — for protecting their business in the face of a disaster and getting their business back up and running if the disaster actually hits.

Business preparedness depends on a whole team.

The concept of teamwork really stands out when it comes to business continuity planning. In the book we spend time on the professional team of advisers that a business typically has in place – but may not have called upon to help it build a plan!

These advisers include:

• Skilled and experienced employees (and not necessarily just upper management)
• Business attorney (who can assess contractual liabilities associated with disaster and, in particular, liability associated with not having a plan)
• Business accountant (helps identify value of equipment, business activities, etc. and thus helps set priorities for protection and recovery)
• Business banker (prepared to offer emergency funds, extend loans, etc.)
• Business insurance agent (with added expertise in Business Interruption insurance, Extra and/or Contingent Expense coverage or riders)

If you are a business owner or a member of management where you work, how would you assess your business continuity plan? Have professional business advisers been involved in putting it together? Is it time for a review of your plan?

What’s your plan of action for preparedness in 2020?

In the midst of everything else that is happening, can you commit to improving the resilience of the “village” around you?

This Advisory lays out several broad suggestions. I hope you’ll take up at least one of them!

In the meanwhile, we’ll keep examining options in more detail here at Emergency Plan Guide. We would very much appreciate your help in that – in the form of questions, comments, and suggestions. Here’s to a very busy 2020!

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide team

P.S. I would also welcome your offer to write a guest advisory! Do you have something you’d like to share? Let me know and we’ll talk about the best way to get your good info out to “our” village here!

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Many companies are being forced to set up or beef up their emergency employee communications plans. Those that don’t may be courting liability.

Read on.

In today’s news, we learn from a simple press release that “The Boston Globe is making customized comprehensive safety guidelines available to all employees via a mobile app.” (That’s my emphasis.)

What does this have to do with YOUR company?

Start with these questions:

• What has your company done about emergency response and emergency communications? Does it have a plan?
• Is your company keeping up with what others are doing?
• Is it meeting its legal responsibilities?

 

Managing emergency communications is an ongoing challenge.

 

1 – You face threats today that may never have been threats in the past.

Again, recent news stories tell of oil train explosions, once-in-a-lifetime flooding, live shooter events and cyberattacks that can cripple entire enterprises.

Is your workplace communications system set up to respond to “new” disasters as well as the usual ones? When did you last do a “risk analysis?”

2 – New technology means the world may hear about your emergency before your front office does.

What’s your procedure for making sure employees get instructions and the public – including suppliers and customers – gets factual information that will staunch rumors?

As Paul Barton, a business communications specialist says, “Rumours are created for a specific reason: they fill in the information void. If an organization does not tell staff what is going on, they will make up their own story.”

And today, that “story” will be out via YouTube and Twitter before the smoke has a chance to clear!

In the past, companies usually assigned one person to be the spokesperson in an emergency. Today, every employee can instantly reach a huge audience. You can’t stop that, but you can train employees in how to communicate.

3 – Employee turnover means your “communications plan” must be continually updated and employees must be regularly trained or they won’t be able to use it.

Not only does your workforce change, but the company premises themselves change. You may change your phone system, switch to a different internet provider or IT set-up, add a new website or a new office, invest in mobile devices for the whole staff, etc.

All these give the business and employees new communications options that must be considered in the emergency communications plan.

4 – Don’t overlook the families.

You may expect your employees to be ready to step up to protect the business and pitch in to get it back on its feet in an emergency.

Guess what. You may be wrong.

Over and over again in disasters, employees – even First Responders! – have abandoned their posts because they were desperate to find out if their families were safe.

If you can reassure employees about their families, your business continuity plan has a much better chance of working.

What this means is your emergency communications plan has to put family communications right up at the top. It must ask and help answer questions like:

• How will the company communicate with employee family members regarding the status of the business and the employee?
• What plan does the family have to get in touch with each other in an emergency?
• Does the family have an out-of-state family contact person?
• Has the family designated a place to go if they get separated and/or they can’t get back to their home?

 

5 – What responsibility does the company really have?

The “Prudent Man Rule” (now probably referred to as the “Prudent Person’s Rule”) has been around in the financial world for nearly 200 years. It says that someone responsible for another’s interests should exercise the same care, skill and judgment that other “prudent men” in that position would exercise.

When articles like the one about The Boston Globe appear in the daily news, you must ask yourself,

“If others are setting up new ways of communicating with employees during emergencies, could we be found deficient or even negligent if we haven’t updated our own plans?”

Here at Emergency Plan Guide we’re not offering legal advice. But we do know that businesses and particularly owners get sued. We believe they can improve their chances of coming through the legal system safely by demonstrating that their decisions with regards to emergency response planning are consistent with good practice.

Two more resources.

Action Item:  If your company’s emergency response plan needs updating, take a look at these for inspiration.

• Small Business Hit By Disaster – Is the Owner Liable? http://EzineArticles.com/8521016

This article reviews the different groups that may sue you after a disaster, and suggests three steps you can take immediately to protect yourself from legal fallout.

• Security at the Front Door https://emergencyplanguide.org/security-at-the-front-door/

If you haven’t thought about physical security, this article will list some “prudent steps” that other companies are taking in this regard.

Once again, this isn’t legal advice, but I hope it falls into the category of “good business” advice.

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

 

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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?

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.