As a business owner, it is your job to keep your employees safe. It is also important to take every step possible to keep your business operational. Disaster management planning can help with this. Many business insurance agencies encourage it. Most companies can benefit from it. ![time lapse photography of lightning during storm](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1527572232473-494f1e9c7917?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w1NjgwOTN8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHw2fHxzdG9ybXxlbnwwfHx8fDE3MjA0NjU2Mjd8MA&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&q=80&w=400)
In short, disaster management helps you determine which risks can impact your business. You need to determine the proper way to avoid those risks. If avoiding them is not possible, the goal is to prevent the worst level of severity.
What Types of Disasters Can Occur?
Most businesses face three types of disasters.
- A natural disaster, sometimes called a cataclysmic event, is one type. It includes hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, storms, and severe flooding.
- Human behavior-related disasters are the second from. They may include strikes, acts of terrorism, robbery, arson and even hostage events.
- The third type is a tech-based breakdown. This includes anything tech-related within your business. It includes a long-term power outage, computer viruses, cyberattacks, breakdowns or similar events.
These disasters can happen to any business. Most of them are hard to avoid. Yet, a disaster plan can help reduce some of the impact such disasters can have on the business.
Create a Disaster Management Plan
A disaster management plan addresses each type of risk listed above. A plan will help provide specific guidelines to take to recovery during such an event. It creates procedures for your team to follow. The goal is to preserve the business, protect employees, and recover quickly. Have a plan in place prior to any event taking place.
A comprehensive process, disaster management plans should have several key areas:
- Do whatever possible to minimize or eliminate risk to human life. You should have a thorough safety overview.
- Include steps to protect the company's assets and records.
- It should provide steps to containing the disaster. This keeps it from spreading. Doing so can help minimize damages.
- Creates a complete recovery plan. This will include steps to get employees, customers, facilities, assets and records back online.
Keep in mind your disaster plan needs to fit your business. Speak to your business insurance agent. Learn if you have coverage for these risks. If not, update your plan. It is essential to then put in place a plan to reduce these risks. Update this plan annually. It can help keep your business moving forward.
Need business insurance? Call Walnut Risk Management at 816-503-6222 right now! We can help you get a fast, free policy quote.