Free Report: How to Create a Corporate Culture Dedicated to Business Continuity

This is a recent article I created and give to my clients through my business website at Continuity Corporation. Recently people have doing some relevent searches here on my blog so I thought I would make a few small changes and share one of them here.

How to Create a Corporate Culture Dedicated to Business Continuity -

If you would like more of these please let me know.

Disaster Tip of The Week: Have A Battery Powered Radio and Extra Batteries

When a catastrophic disaster occurs it often results in the loss of power. However, many radio stations will still be able to transmit information over the air waves.

In order to hear this information, and hear news about highways, rescues, orders to evacute and other important information you will need to have either a battery powered radio, a solar powered radio or a radio that works when you wind it up.

The radios I personally use work with both batteries and through winding it up, but everyone has there own preference.

One important thing to remember though is if your radio uses only battery power, make sure you have plenty of extra fresh batteries on hand. 

Also excellent and highly recommended are the NOAA weather alert radios that you can set to come on during an emergency.

No matter what type you prefer just choose something and keep it in your disaster kit.

Bay Bridge Closure and How to Mitigate Workforce Disruptions

Workforce disruptions can be caused by a large number of different events such as strikes, protests, workplace violence, absenteeism due to illness (think pandemics and epidemics like the current H1N1 virus) and even transportation issues.

Typically the impact of these events can be mitigated, but to do so requires planning for the event ahead of time.  Including these types of events in your continuity planning and enterprise resilience will certainly put you ahead of the game when these incidents arise.

In the past I have witnessed several of these types of disruptions in both large and small scales and in many of these cases the businesses that had plans in place fair far better than those that do not.

In the last two months the Bay Bridge has been closed down twice for repairs. The first was a planned shut down during a holiday weekend, but extended due to discoveries of needed repairs. The second occurred after the recent repair job failed.

There are many ways to mitigate the impact from these events ranging from staggered and flexible work hours for employees, making arrangements for key employees to stay in other locations, having some employees work from home, car pools, planned shuttle services, utilization of other transportation services, etc.

Each of these can help your business reduce impacts from these types of events and each of these also presents their own problems which is why you should be planning these things in advance and making them a part of your continuity management programs.

Knowing what you will do in these types of events will also assist you for planing other events that may also cause workforce disruptions. If you are considering creating a plan or would like other solutions to supplement what you are already doing please give us the opportunity to assist you. Visit our site at: Continuity Corporation or give as a call 877-565-8324

The Loss of a Key Employee Can Be Devastating To a Business

Many businesses have Key Employees who are the only people responsible for specific duties, and often these are critical, core functions to the business. Often these employees will also have the only access to certain information that may be needed to perform some of these critical functions and operations.

The impact on the business after the loss of a key employee can be severe and can include but are not limited to the following:

• The distraction of other employees, resulting in missed opportunities and deadlines, deteriorating morale, and internal conflicts

•  The loss of confidence from employees, managers and financial backers of the business and can include both suppliers and customers

•  The business may suffer a weakening of their credit rating.

•  The financial cost (in time and dollars) to find, hire and train a replacement.

•  A need for immediate cash to fulfill promises made to the deceased employee's spouse or family, such as salary continuation or deferred compensation or other incentives promised.

• The business might also fail to capitalize on important business opportunities because cash reserves are being used to recruit and train the new employee(s) or pay out compensation.

Fortunately there are a number of things you can do to mitigate these issues the first of which is consider key employee insurance. Documenting the processes acurately that the Key Employee is responsible for is another.

New Disaster Preparedness Survey Highlights Need For More Comprehensive Planning

A recent survey of over 700 small and mid-sized businesses in the United States and Canada was conducted by Agility Recovery Solutions and Hughes Marketing Group to assess their disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

The survey results indicate that though more small and mid-sized businesses are taking preparedness steps, the plans are not comprehensive enough and many lack planning around basic infrastructure and people needs.

In addition many of these businesses spend little time updating and maintaining their plans. According to the survey:

Of the companies with a plan, 12%
have not updated it at all in the past 12 months. Another
33% have only provided general updates. This means that
45% of companies have a continuity plan in place, but have
not taken the appropriate steps to regularly update or test
its capabilities.

You can view the complete survey below:

2009 Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Survey

Full Disclosure:

Disaster Preparedness Blog is not affiliated in any way with Agility Recovery Solutions. All information, and survey used with permission. Thanks to Agility Recovery Solutions for allowing us to use and pass along this information.