Picking up and moving forward in three manageable steps

Devastation. Disbelief. Distress. Just some of the stressful emotions that play out in times of disaster, and we’re all too familiar with these in Australia and New Zealand this year.   

Working with businesses of all sizes across Australia, we’ve seen firsthand the wreckage facing business owners and employees. Many are dealing with damaged or destroyed homes too, alongside the burden of business recovery and regaining lost ground. Now that the smoke has cleared, what would you do if your business was caught in a disaster?  

During these times, it can be hard to focus clearly, so here are three manageable steps to set your business up to weather any disaster.

1. Take stock of what you have.

In business and in life, your assets aren’t always physical. Some assets you can count as having ‘on hand’ can be:

• your life and health, and your will to recover
• your insurance policies
• availability of community and government assistance
• your business’ Disaster Recovery Plan – if you’re one of the few small to medium businesses that have one!

2. Make a plan so you can be prepared.

Building an active disaster recovery plan into your business is crucial in this day and age. It’s dicing with business extinction to skim over this activity. Your plan needs to move past good intentions and move to a documented, actionable framework covering the who, what, when and how, considering all communication scenarios, as well as data and IP recovery and business continuity planning strategies.

3. Communicate the plan.

Get the team together before a crisis hits, and communicate, communicate, communicate.

It’s not only employees that need to know their part, but also all stakeholders who: a) appreciate that you’ve got a plan and have considered them, and b) can have your back in the hard times.

Being included from the start, they’ll be more inclined to do what they can in a crisis – think insurance provider, IT managed service provider, partners, lenders, and even key customers and suppliers.

Putting together the above doesn’t have to become a task. At CodeBlue, we can help you be prepared so that if (touch wood) anything was to happen that your business is okay.

We use a proactive systems-based approach to make the most of what you have. We can then advise you on how to develop key IT components in your disaster recovery planning for the protection of your vital IP and data going forward. Take the first to protect your business today and call us to discuss your disaster recovery plan.