Business Continuity Planning
How resilient is your business to a disaster?
Ask yourself these questions,
- Would my business be able to recover if it suffered from a major incident that affected my ability to trade for example;
- Fires, Flooding, Gas Explosions, Storm Damage, Theft, Sabotage, Terrorist Attacks?
All of the above could expose your business to substantial loss and significant damage to your business. Assessing the risks and working out how you would respond to a disaster, both short and long term, is key to surviving an incident.
Tick the relevant checklist below and see if your business could continue to operate.
- The telephone network failed
- The Computers/IT network failed
- The Electricity supply failed
- Severe staff shortages due to sickness
- Key documents destroyed in a fire
- Significant flooding
So what is business continuity?
It is the holistic management process that identifies potential business impacts that threaten an organisation and provides a framework for building resilience with the capability for an effective response that safeguards the interest of its key stakeholders, reputations and brand.
Remember that you don't know what unexpected events are waiting around the corner just as you can't avoid the unplanned events that will happen. We can however become organised and at the very least be prepared for their impact.
Why should I do anything about business continuity?
By embedding business continuity and making it part of the way you run your organisation helps to prepare you to offer 'business as usual' in the quickest possible time, rather than having to 'fire fight' in an emergency.
What type of risks are we talking about?
- Fire
- Loss of premises
- Flood
- Loss of staff
- Terrorism
- Adverse weather
- Computer failure
- Power/Utility failure
- Loss of telecommunications
- Supplier failure
- Loss of critical data or documents
- Transportation disruptions
All of the above RISKS could cause relatively minor or very major disruption, resulting in:
- A complete failure of your business
- Loss of income
- Loss of reputation
- Loss of customers
- Legal and regulatory penalties
- Loss of staff
- Insurance payment increases.
Would your business be able to continue?
If you don't think your business would be able to continue if your were to suffer from some of the above examples then you would certainly benefit from a Business Continuity Plan.
An effective business continuity plan will help prepare your business to deal effectively and efficiently with any foreseeable disruptions
PJ-Fire Safety Consultants are able to offer the services of our experienced consultants who will work together with you to develop your business continuity plan to help save and protect your business should an emergency or disaster strike.