Preparing Your Business To Do Business in Any Circumstance
An emergency is an unexpected and serious situation that requires immediate action. By its very definition, making the correct decisions in an emergency can be difficult. They happen without warning but the decisions you make under stress and duress can mean the difference between success and failure. One way to make sure your business is more likely to thrive through an emergency is by preparing mentally and physically ahead of time. Here are two ways to prepare for the unexpected.
Do a Risk Assessment
You never know when an emergency will strike, but you can decide what risks exist and how you will react in each situation. When it happens, you’ll have your plan to fall back on instead of working blindly. Start with a risk assessment. Sit down with your whole team to discuss what could potentially befall your business and how you can mitigate the risk and react if it becomes reality. For example, a simple emergency is an extended power outage. Mitigation could be training, but much of it is out of your control. Instead, prepare for the risk by installing backup generators Philadelphia PA or moving to renewable energy and off the grid.
To get started, you can hire a risk assessment professional to walk you through the steps or visit OSHA’s website for forms and guidelines for creating a risk assessment and then your emergency response plan.
Create an Emergency Response Plan
Your risk assessment will leave you with a list of action items for mitigation and response but it is generally limited to those emergencies that come from the nature of your business. You’ll assign responsibility for those action items including creating a team to develop an emergency response plan. Your ERP will cover the types of emergencies that are outside of your control and potentially trigger internal issues you covered in the risk assessment. For example, a thief could turn off your power to see if anyone responds. Your planned response is adding a lock to your breaker box in combination with an automatic switch to a backup generator.
Your ERP should cover every possible scenario from extreme weather to potential terrorist threats. Make sure you include clear lines of communication and who is responsible for whom. Keep the ERP in a couple of locations and review it at least once a year and any time major changes are made to the business.
With a risk assessment and emergency response plan, you’ll have the peace of mind that everyone in your company will know what to do in any potential emergency.
