Is YOUR business 6 minutes away form a natural disaster?

Hurricane Preparedness is not just for home.

I realize that hurricane preparedness and the small business is not the most flashy of topics to talk about BUT it is vital to small businesses realize that a natural disaster hits a business every 6 minutes and we are not talking about a broken coffee pot on Monday morning or the photo copier jamming at 3:30 pm just before the weekly reports are due at 4:00pm!

By significant disasters, I’m talking about:

o Personal business disasters such as a water pipe that breaks late Friday night when no one is around and it’s not found until Monday morning after flooding the entire building

o Community or regional disaster like a Category 4 hurricane thundering down on your community at full force.

These are the times when business operations stops and a significant disruption to not only involving customer services require a massive overhaul or rebuilding of the infrastructure of the company is required. These events are very costly and time intensive. Many small businesses do not have the fudge factor to absorb such business challenges when not at least initially planed for.

For many small businesses, a disaster is often much more stressful than that of a large Fortune 500 company simply because there are less people to help with the re-establishment of the company and financial resources of a small operation are slim to begin with.

Did you know that small businesses that are prepared for a disaster generally:

§ Are back in operation within 3 weeks

§ Have a 37% average annual growth rate after a disaster

§ Sustain a 76% employee retention rate for first three years after disaster

§ Enjoy upwards of a 28% increase in new customers

§ Benefit from long term customer loyalty. Many studies show that customers stay extremely loyal to companies that quickly recover during the disaster. Loyalty often extend for year seven decades after a disaster.

§ Identified with high esteem in the larger community as a leader who was ready and able to serve in the face of a disaster!

Unfortunately the opposite is true for the small business owners that are NOT prepared for a disaster. They have:

§ Increase of 71% greater chance of being out of business in less than 24 months after a disaster hits.

§ Lower employee retention rate of approximately 19% the first year back in operation

§ Require increased costs to train new staff by at least 14% than previous cost for initial employee training before a natural disaster.

§ Take upwards of 8 months to re-open and generate a cash flow.

§ Many small businesses most never reopen for business.

Is your Small Business disaster prepared?

The first thing a small business owner should do is go buy a local daily newspaper. After you buy the newspaper, immediately today if not sooner go and get a digital camera and take a picture of EVERYTHING in your building from:

o office furniture

o coffee pot & microwave

o file cabinets

o computers

o telephones

o special equipment your company uses

o walls

o ceilings

o light fixtures

o signs

o doors

o bathrooms

o storage rooms

o landscaping

o trees & plants outside

o vehicles

o parking lot pavement

o fencing

o roof

o basement

o external buildings

Every time you take a picture make sure the newspaper is in the picture in a less pronounced place but still visible. Guess you are wonder why the newspaper is in every picture? That is a reliable and inexpensive way to demonstrate and validate the date of the picture. This will offer further proof to the insurance company that indeed the picture was taken on or after that date.

After the camera shoot is completed don’t just print the pictures out and put them in a file and forget about it. Open up a free email account with Google mail, Hot Mail, Yahoo or some other free mail service and send a copy of EACH of the picture with a detailed description in the email with a subject title that clearly and quickly describes that particular picture. The reason to send the pictures to an independent email source is that you will be able to access those pictures even if in a natural disaster your office is blown away and all business documents are lost. At least you have a verifiable resource to SHOW your office supplies and equipment. The sate stamp that is on the emails is additional verification of time the property was current.

While taking pictures, take a picture or two of each of our staff so that you can have a photo resource if there was ever a need to do a picture posting of a missing person in a disaster. Many learned the challenges of not having pictures of employees quickly accessible in an emotional hurry when 9-11 terrorist attack occurred. When all the office files are lost in a disaster, it hard to know how to contact loved ones to secure necessary information about a staff member’s well being and location.

You might want to send a copy of the name and description of each staff member along with emergency contact information of a person out of the local area so that it will be easier to gain knowledge of how that person is after a major disaster.

NOTE: NEVER SUPPLY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS OR OTHER CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION especially in an unsecured site - ALWAYS GET THE EMPLOYEE’S PERMISSON to place that information in an email account.

After the photos are taken, it is important to then start to develop your disaster emergency preparedness plans so that you will know what is most important including:

§ What each staff member is to take from the office in an emergency evacuation

§ Where you and your staff will meet up and regroup if separated in a disaster evacuation

§ How you will stay in communication during and immediately after a disaster event occurs.

§ Who are the members of the contingency chain of command should the owner / leader not be available.

For about $125 each computer used in the business, there should be a easy to access and remove external computer backup resource. This external back up resource needs to be convenient so that each person would be able to grab that back up and have all their computer data and information with them when they evacuate the area and building. Having a 500 GB backup hard drive is extremely well worth every penny it cost especially when the office computers are lost, stolen, damaged or are not able to be accessed for several days or weeks if ever again.

Remember the faster you can reestablish your company after a disaster the better the chance of you being able to provide services to your customers, gain new customers and get back on your feet. The more you plan now with emergency preparedness checklists and emergency preparedness necessities including a 3-day personal emergency preparedness kit for each employee the better off you and your staff will be. The more you prepare to protect your staff and business BEFORE a disaster the more likely you will be able to be operational in the shortest amount of time possible with appreciative staff and happy customers

.COMMENTS WELCOMED!

Please share your thoughts, emergency preparedness tips and stories here on this blog.

All I ask is that everyone be respectful and sensitive of each other and that identifying information about a person who is not the author be limited to protect their privacy.

Be Safe – Be Prepared – Help Others!

Terrie

www.trainforahurricane.com