How would your business cope if a third of your employees couldn't come to work because of a pandemic flu? What if your local electricity or transport services were down for a week? Or if your main supplier was in an area affected by floods and could not deliver critical supplies?
The Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness estimates that up to 86% of small and medium-sized businesses fail to recover in the 3 years following an emergency.
Being prepared is critical for any business. Events such as those of September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina have shown us that major emergencies can happen and that they have a significant impact on business.
Creating a business continuity plan (BCP) can help your business survive during and after a crisis. You can prepare your BCP at the same time as your strategic plan, or it can be undertaken separately.
What types of emergency can affect your business?
For a business, an emergency situation is one that causes it to stop or alter its day-to-day activities. In Canada, this can include:
- Natural disasters: Different regions of Canada can be affected by a variety of cataclysms, including blizzards, hurricanes, forest fires, floods and earthquakes. You should be aware of what natural phenomena can strike your area.
- Pandemic flu: This is a major outbreak of a rapidly spreading and contagious strain of influenza. A pandemic would mainly affect businesses through high employee absenteeism: up to 50% of employees could be unable to work. Unlike other types of emergencies, the effect of a pandemic will be worldwide rather than regional. For more information, see the BDC guide to business continuity planning for a pandemic.
- Environmental accidents: Includes the effects of pollution, spills of hazardous materials, etc.
- Power outages and critical systems failures: Includes breakdowns and stoppages in the communications, transportation or health sectors.
- Accidents, sabotage, terrorist strike
- Cyber attacks
Emergencies have an impact on your business because they affect:
- People: One of the greatest impacts of an emergency is on human resources. During a crisis such as a pandemic, your employees and partners may be unable to get to work.
- Infrastructure: Any impact on the transportation system could make it impossible for employees to come to work, and keep you from making deliveries or receiving needed materials. If the communications or electricity infrastructures are affected, it may be difficult for you to continue your day-to-day operations.
- Computers: Your data and your ability to work can be jeopardized if your computer systems are damaged or if your technical support staff are absent from work.
- Suppliers and clients: If key business partners, located in another part of the world, are affected by an emergency, this can have a significant impact on your business.
How to prepare for an emergency
While we can't eliminate the potential of an emergency occurring, we can reduce its impact by being prepared. In an emergency, you may not have time to make the arrangements necessary to:
- Protect your employees
- Minimize damage to your site
- Minimize business impacts
Planning is the key to being prepared. You should prepare a plan of what to do during the emergency, to protect your employees and worksite, and to maintain as many of your operations as possible.
Crisis preparedness
Ensuring the safety of employees, your site and equipment during an emergency requires planning that is specific to the type of emergencies that can occur in your area. This may include plans for:
- Evacuating employees
- Creating a shelter in the workplace
- Providing first aid or medical attention
- Having emergency supplies on hand. Basic emergency supplies can consist of a transistor radio, flashlight with extra batteries, tools, first aid kit, food, water and blankets, and a power generator.
The Canadian Red Cross offers guidelines on how businesses can prepare for the physical impacts of an emergency.
Ensuring the survival of your business
The aim of business continuity planning is to help you continue to deliver critical services or products to your clients during the emergency, instead of focusing on restarting business operations after the emergency has passed.
BDC offers all businesses a detailed business continuity plan to help them prepare for an emergency. The 8 key steps are:
1. Establish an emergency preparedness team
2. Identify essential services and functions
3. Identify required skill sets and staff reallocation
4. Identify potential issues
5. Prepare a plan for each essential service and function
6. Compare with Capital Health's "Preparedness Checklist"
7. Review the plan with the team
8. Revise, test and update the plan
Getting outside assistance
Creating a business continuity plan is an essential part of a business' overall strategic plan. An external consultant, can give you the guidance you need to ensure that that your business continuity plan is thorough and realistic.
