The word “Disaster” immediately brings violence to mind: a hurricane, a flood, or an earthquake. Just thinking about it, the real impact of a disaster, no matter what its cause, becomes clear.

When a disaster hits a small business without an emergency survival plan, it likely means total closure of the company and loss of jobs for everyone involved.

Even when a plan is in place, you may be missing a key component: being prepared to handle employees’ concern for the safety and well-being of their loved ones.

This concern is so strong that it is often known that even the highest staff members, with the greatest responsibility for mission-critical functions, leave the business altogether, struggling to get home to save the family from chaos or the imaginary danger.

If key personnel have left, even though the building is still standing, the result can be the same: total closure.

Is there a solution?

After a career working with small (and larger) businesses, and the last 15 years helping to build and lead an emergency preparedness team in the local neighborhood, we believe there IS a solution.

In our opinion, the ideal solution is the coordination or even the “integration” of communities. This can be achieved when …

• Company management, staff and employees have been trained in the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT).

• The company has built its emergency preparedness plan around the CERT model and these specially trained employees.

• All members of the employee family have been encouraged or even supported to receive the same CERT training.

The ideal extension of this concept would be for each of the employees’ residential neighborhoods to also become CERT-enabled communities, which we must recognize is an unlikely possibility.

Nevertheless simply knowing that their families are prepared for major emergencies would allow employees to remain in their jobs longer, helping the business take immediate action to protect critical equipment and data to preserve the business and its revenue.

It’s a win / win if it can be done. And even if only part of the solution can be implemented, the business will be in a better place to withstand or even prevent business disruption.

It all starts with emergency preparedness plans for the neighborhood and / or business. Such plans are NOT difficult to develop given the many resources available from government sources and dedicated authors. But it is urgent to start now:

1. Emergencies can and do happen. Without a plan, they can turn into disasters.

2. Your planning should be done BEFORE the emergency occurs.

New and inexpensive tools are available to ease the process. Don’t wait any longer to get started!