Disasters such as fires, natural disasters, burglaries and cyberattacks can strike at any time. By taking a few precautionary measures, you can help to deflect disaster and ensure business continuity. Here are just 5 steps to disaster-proofing your business.
Shutterstock Licensed Photo – By Brian A Jackson
Install a backup power generator
Modern companies are reliant on electricity. As a result, when a power cut this, it has the potential to temporarily shut down a business. Long power cuts could be particularly harmful to your output. Your best defense against this is to hire commercial electrical contractors to install a backup power generator. This will allow your business to stay connected to electricity in the event of a power cut. There are lots of different generators that you can look into, including solar generators.
Back up data on the cloud
Storing all your data locally could be risky – if there’s a fire or a burglary or a natural disaster or a cyberattack, all your data could be lost. Backing up data on the cloud allows you to retrieve it even if all your business equipment and premises is destroyed. There are lots of cloud services out there to choose from, many of which include managed IT support to help you with technical problems.
Introduce disaster protocol
Having disaster protocol in place allows you to easily react in a crisis. This could be essential if you have a team of staff – by creating a clear emergency plan and training your staff how to follow this plan out so that you can ensure that everyone will know how to respond if disaster strikes. This could include organizing a fire drill and rehearsing a practice defense against a cyberattack. On top of using in-person training, it could be worth also printing off an employee handbook.
Insure yourself
Insurance won’t prevent disasters from happening, but it could help to pay for recovery. For instance, commercial property insurance may be able to cover damage as the result of natural disaster or damage from a break-in. Different forms of insurance may also be able to protect you from expensive lawsuits or from damage to machinery. Shop around for business insurance packages that contain a variety of these schemes for a discounted rate.
Set up business savings
It’s always useful to have some savings set aside that you can also dip into during an emergency. Even with multiple insurance schemes in place, you can’t insure yourself against everything – savings can provide an extra safety net for when this happens, allowing you to pay money towards recovery. You’re best off using a high interest savings account that will accumulate wealth without you having to contribute money to it.