Two years ago, we were all thrown into a major health pandemic. With little warning, businesses and employees quickly changed course to deal with the emergency, with minimal time for preparation.
Health hazards and pandemics are only one type of emergency that can affect a business and its employees. Unfortunately, disasters come in many other forms, too, from natural hazards like floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, to human-caused things like accidents and acts of violence, to technology-related hazards like power outages, equipment failure, and system hacking.
Now might be a good time to do a thoughtful reconsideration of your organization’s disaster preparations, incorporating lessons you learned from the pandemic. If you don’t currently have a disaster plan, now would be a good time to create one.
You’ll want your preparations to be specific to your type of business and the kinds of disasters that could occur where your employees are located. There are lots of good resources available to assist you. Ready.gov has a wealth of information on disaster preparation, including downloadable hazard information by topic and toolkits to help identify your risks, develop a plan, and take action to be prepared.
The Small Business Administration also has checklists and safety tips for many kinds of emergencies on their website that could help inform your preparations.
While we all hope never to have to implement disaster preparedness, it may have made things easier two years ago to have had an idea of how to pivot when the pandemic arose.
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