No matter what the crisis, smart companies have a plan

Earthquakes, hurricanes, and fires clearly have the ability to negatively impact your business; most companies realize this and take the appropriate precautionary measures. However, you would be surprised how many companies fail to recognize that man-made disasters can also ruin their business. Unexpected data loss, an employee tampering with high security information, faulty servers – the list goes on.

Not all catastrophes stem from stereotypical causes. That said you must prepare to be ready for anything. Although it is virtually impossible to anticipate every single type of disaster; you can bunch different potential issues into categories, and then write out brief, clean-cut plan of attacks on how you would handle them each of them. Put the following disaster recovery planning advice into practice at your company today.

Write it out - Put everything on paper. Make sure that you establish a well written policy that details how various types of disasters will be handled. When a crisis strikes, people typically go into “freak out mode.” This is a natural reaction, but being well prepared can help to diminish panicking. Minimize the disturbances your company incurs during and after an emergency. Practice makes perfect – Why do you think children have fire drills at school? Just as children have practice drills, prepare your employees for these types of situations as much as possible.

Review and Revisit – Even the best plans get stale and potentially completely outdated with time. Make sure you are reviewing your plans bi-annually (or at least annually) to ensure they will still work for your company. As your company grows, it will also outgrow some, (if not most!) of your past plans.

If it hits – don’t panic! - This piece of advice is more difficult to follow than all of the others. When a disaster hits, it is human nature for us to completely freak out. However, if you have sufficiency prepared for the possibility of this, you are in better shape than you even think. Take a deep breath, remind yourself that you can handle it, and just stick to the plans you worked so hard on creating when you were in a solid, frazzle-free state of mind.

Don’t be too hard on yourself – If something unfortunate happens to your company, allow yourself enough time to get back on your feet. Setting unreachable expectations; both time-span wise and commitment wise on you and your staff will only end up hurting everyone. Rushing through the process of restoring everything back to normal will not only be stressful, but will just end up causing ripple effect problems down the road.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help – People specialize in disaster recovery consulting for a reason. If your budget allows, reach for help with this daunting task. You may not like the thought of dishing out the dough in the moment, but when you factor in how much time, money, and frustration you can save in the end, it is very well worth it.

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