Finance Marketing Business

Though many do not take the time to do it, continuity planning is something every business should engage in. This is the plan of how your business can operate if it experiences a disruption due to some sort of disaster.

Smaller companies can be a bit more informal with continuity plans. With just a few employees, everyone can sit around the table and discuss possibilities. With larger businesses, however, involvement needs to be on a departmental basis. And you need to try to get everyone to buy in to your action plan.

You do not want to try to plan for every scenario imaginable. You will not be able to. What is important is the end result, that you have no power, for example. It does not matter which type of natural disaster produced that result, just that you have a plan of how to handle it.

Your plan should be simple and easy to follow. People often try to get every detail in the continuity plan to the point that it is huge. No one takes the time to read plans of this magnitude. And pulling it off the shelf at the moment an emergency strikes is too late. Make the plan as straight forward as possible and easy to read and retain. Make use of tools such as flowcharts whenever you can.

Have each department come up with their own ideas of what the critical items are in the case of an emergency. They should know their needs better than anyone. Once you have the separate pieces, you can put them into a single plan and have everyone discuss it. You want to make sure it all works well together and you also want staff to buy into it.

A key ingredient to have in any continuity plan is contact information. There should be contact numbers and emergency contact numbers for all staff. There should also be contact information for the people you do business with every day, such as clients and vendors. A copy of the plan needs to be kept off site in case ones in the office cannot be reached.

Test the plan as best you can to determine that it makes sense and all items have been considered. It is often not until you reach this stage and are really going through the plan line by line that you find omissions.

It is easy to view continuity planning as busy work, taking you away from your real tasks. However, if you should end up in an emergency, your plan will end up taking on a great deal more significance for everyone. Hopefully, that day will never come. But if it does, you will be glad you invested the time and effort.

Learn more about Continuity. Stop by James Evans’s site where you can find out all about Continuity plans and what it can do for you.

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