Civil Emergencies - Business Continuity Advice

So how do you ensure your business is prepared?

What is Business Continuity and how do I do it? Business continuity is not something that only large businesses should think about. No matter what size your business is, how many people it employs, your business must be prepared, because any form of interruption has the potential to seriously affect, yours, and your employees' livelihoods.

Business continuity does not require a huge outlay; it does not have to be time consuming and does not need to be a resource hungry process. There are many ways to ensure survival, simple planning, assessing your business and putting on paper what you, as the most experience person in your business, would do day to day is at the heart of Business Continuity.

A simple plan and putting these procedures in place ahead of time, making them known and understood by all those that work within your business is all part of the process.

The first step is to look through you business, considering the Business Impact Checklist attached. This is a critical stage, so it is important to take time when answering the questions on the Impact Checklist and ensure that you document relevant details/information/procedures.

At the end of this process you will have the essence of a business continuity plan. To complete the process all that is required is to expand the information, develop coping strategies and consider document recovery.

Obviously the larger and more complex your business the more detailed your plan may need to be.