Business Continuity Plans in Small Businesses

Business Continuity Plans in Small Businesses

As a small business owner, you will no doubt plan for many areas of your business. Marketing, sales strategies, and future recruitment needs, etc are probably all areas you have considered and have a plan in place for. But, have you fully considered how your business would survive if the worst were to happen? Business continuity plans in small businesses are vital to ensure you can keep trading.

There are many areas to consider with disaster recovery and you should document these formally. By doing so you also have the possibility to gain more clients and business. Some organisations will request access to your Disaster recovery plan before agreeing to work with you. This requirement will be a part of their own business continuity planning.

Covid 19

When Covid 19 struck, how many small businesses would have been better prepared to move with the fast-changing restrictions that we all faced, had they implemented a business continuity plan previously?

Companies that relied on footfall for sales were suddenly cut off from their income streams. Offices with paper-based records were unable to access their information. Employees were ill-prepared to work from home, without the tools required to carry out their roles effectively.

You may be forgiven for thinking that Covid 19 could not have been predicted, so how could these companies have prepared for this eventuality. General disaster planning would have gone a long way to getting companies back on their feet quicker.

What situations could business continuity plans in small businesses, help with?

The answer to this question is any situation that could have a major impact on your business. When creating or reviewing your business continuity plan you must first assess all potential risks to the company and consider what impact they could have on the business in the short, medium, and long term, if applicable. You will then look at options to mitigate those risks and thus reduce the impact on the business should those situations occur.

Examples of Situations to include when writing your disaster recovery / business continutity plan

  • Flooding
  • Fire
  • Malicious intent
  • Terrorism
  • Natural Disasters
  • Pandemics
  • Cyber Attack
  • Accidents and incidents in the workplace

Lets look at these in more detail…

Flooding

Flooding can be from any water source. You may not be by a river or by the sea to be impacted by flooding. Freak storms can cause flash flooding in areas that have never been affected by flooding previously.

A water tank bursting or a pipe leaking could all cause water damage to your property which could impact your ability to continue work on-site for a period of time or could damage property.

Fire

You may feel you have the necessary precautions in place to not be at risk of a fire, however, you have no control over the buildings and properties and people around your business.

Malicious Intent

A disgruntled employee can cause havoc quickly, deleting files, stealing documentation, releasing company information to third parties. Unhappy customers can equally cause you trouble.

Burglary and criminal damage could require your business to close albeit temporarily, which will have an impact on your businesses income and outgoings.

Terrorism

The effect of terrorism is far and wide. The threat level being raised nationally could cause potential customers to rethink their plans and that reduced footfall possibly at the busiest time of year could have a significant impact on your business turnover.

Extra security measures may have to be put into place, the increased expenditure, reducing your profit levels.

Natural Disasters

Perhaps in the UK, we are generally lucky to not be at risk of major natural disasters, but flash flooding (as mentioned above) and gale-force winds, wildfires, etc will affect businesses across the UK each year. Yet planning for these incidents ensures those companies are best prepared and can react to situations when they occur, reducing the risk to their business.

Pandemics

We have all seen and are living through the greatest pandemic of our time. The problems that companies have experienced are like none ever before, but there is potential for the same problems to continue and new pandemics will occur in the future.

Cyber Attacks

The Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2021 states ‘Four in ten businesses (39%) and a quarter of charities (26%) report having cyber security breaches or attacks in the last 12 months.’ This can be a costly area of your business to have not planned for.

Accidents and incidents in the workplace

Health and safety doesn’t have to be time-consuming or expensive to implement, but the cost to your business of not embracing health and safety across your organisation can be huge. There is the obvious cost to the business if an accident shut down you briefly, but there are hidden costs such as the additional staff that may be required, the increase in your insurance costs, the costs of investigating an incident, fines etc. Additional impacts include the companies reputation, public image, and more. Getting health and safety wrong is a costly mistake to make.

So, what can you do to mitigate the risk of impacts on your small business?

There are many different areas you should consider and implement within your business including:

  • Antivirus and malware protetion and data security.
  • Password policies, what makes a strong password, how often will they be changed, are they stored?
  • Cloud based software, great for ensuring access to your data from any location, consideration should be taken as to how secure the software is, what procedures and policies they have in place and where your data will be stored. This is important to know for your own GDPR policies too.
  • Data Backups, do you have regular back ups of your website, databases, clould based software, emails, cloud storage etc.
  • How will your staff work remotely if required, think about phone connections, laptops, headsets. How will you comunicate with the team.
  • Health and Safety procedures and policies should be in place and adhered to, but have you thought about your home workers? You may carry out DSE ( Data Screen Equipment assessments) in the office but these are still required by homeworkers too.
  • HR, If an employee is leaving or has left, have you disabled their access, changed keyfob or door codes?
  • Do you have security measures in place, policies for left luggage, training for incident management?
  • Is all of your stock or assets kept at one location, If access to this location is restricted what options do you have.
  • Do your staff have a level of knowledge or understanding of the colleagues roles, If a key person is away from the business for any reason unexpectedly, could you continue without them in the short term. Have you considered key person insurance?
  • Are you a retail store, a face to face business such as restaurants etc what other route to markets are available to you. Could you take your business online? Could you take your meals to your customers if they are unable to come to you – as many food outlets did, during lockdown for Covid 19.
  • Is a large amount of your business relient on a certain client or industry? If that client or industry were no longer trading or using your business then that will impact your business. Dont be relient on 1 area or client, spread your business and reduce your risk, if that revenue stream is lost.

As you can see there is an obvious case for business continuity plans in small businesses, to ensure businesses are as prepared as they can be to react to any situation planned or unforeseen.

If you would like help with your processes, policies, support with implementing new procedures, or help with sales and marketing strategies and routes to market then get in touch today to see how we might help.