Plan Today for What Could Happen Tomorrow
Roger Stevenson creates plans he hopes he will never have to use. In an organization, his job is the one everyone needs but hopes they will not. Stevenson is an emergency manager for the City of Salem, Oregon.
Emergency planning and management is often overlooked by small and mid-sized companies; and it can often mean the difference between business operations continuing or stopping in the event of a catastrophic event. Also referred to as continuity planning, emergency planning looks at how a business should run and what it should do when business is severely interrupted or even permanently stopped.
Despite its importance, only 27% of corporations felt they had well- or fully-developed emergency plans, according to Business Insurance. Further, they found ? when examined by an insurance company ? that number was optimistic.
Mr. Stevenson said that planning for an emergency is more important than managing it. In terms of disasters (both natural and man-made), he encourages businesses to ask ?what in our standard business practices would put us out of business?? That is, where are the weak links and single points-of-failure in the business?
Emergencies are not simply fires or earthquakes, he advises, but also generators failing or computer systems crashing.
Despite the cost, Stevenson encourages all businesses to develop a continuity of operations. Developing such a plan involves looking for weak links in business processes and determining how to work around them, work without them, and restore them - before an emergency happens.
?Getting the doors back open is the most important step. For small disasters, businesses should work with their insurance companies as well as with the SBA to secure emergency loans,? Stevenson advises.
In large disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) works with the Small Business Administration (SBA) to provide disaster relief. If certain premises are rendered uninhabitable, Mr. Stevenson points out that the Chamber of Commerce can help.
?They have contacts within the real estate community and can quickly help [a business] relocate,? Stevenson adds.
Many resources are available to help in emergency planning and emergency management. Mr. Stevenson highly recommends that businesses reference the Public Entity Risk Institute at http://www.riskinstitute.org/PERI and Continuity Central at http://www.continuitycentral.com. An example plan can be found online at http://csrc.nist.gov/fasp/FASPDocs/contingency-plan/TreasCOOPBSP.htm
Additionally, managers looking to mitigate risk should:
- Internally chart business processes and identify points of weakness.
- Identify redundant or backup resources that can be utilized to manage points of weakness.
- Create a plan for notifying employees and directing them to redundant or backup resources.
- Have physical and non-physical assets audited to verify that they are accounted for and appropriately insured.
- Communicate and train staff in implementing emergency plans.