Make the Necessary Preparations for Hurricane Season NOW!
Right now, most businesses are focused on keeping their employees safe and healthy during one of the worst pandemics in history. Do not let that lead you away from protecting your business from another threat—hurricanes. Whether you are in the path of a storm or not, your business can take a major hit.
Ready to protect your business during hurricane season? At Trinity Solutions, we recommend the following protocol in order to protect your business during hurricane season–and ensure business continuity as best as possible during a weather event.
Perform an Assessment of Your Insurance Coverage
- Know Your Insurance Coverage
Having a restoration company perform a pre-loss assessment will ensure you have adequate coverage. Take the time now to review your insurance policies for detailed coverage of flooding, power outages, and loss of revenue. And be sure to take inventory of your assets twice a year. Have a camera ready to document any weather-related damage. These steps will help your business be storm ready during hurricane season—and at any time of year.
- Perform a Risk Assessment
Determine the impact of a hurricane on your employees, property, and operations. What are your weak points? How will damage or losing production time affect your business? But determining risk needs to go further than your front door. You’ll also need to review any potential weaknesses for suppliers and vendors in the event of a hurricane. Know how downtime on their end will affect you. Then make a comprehensive plan for each area of risk.
Create a Disaster Plan—and Practice It
- Create a Responsive Action Plan
It is essential to have a business continuity plan, communication plan, and security plan for your company. Put together a larger action plan to identify your business and employee needs should a storm occur. Identify essential employees to keep on staff and those who will execute the action plan.
- Develop a Clear Communication Plan
Develop a clear communication plan for your business. Include steps that your business will take to connect with employees, vendors, customers, and emergency services. Maintain an updated list of employee, customer, and vendor contact information–both on and off site in a secure location. If you are in a storm-prone or flood-prone area, you’ll also want to outline evacuation details and meeting points in case of a storm.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a helpful toolkit to help protect your businesses during hurricane season.
Check out FEMA’s Hurricane Toolkit.
- Practice, Practice, Practice!
Once your action and communication plans are complete, don’t let that plan sit in a drawer. Each employee should review and practice your emergency plans at least twice a year. A familiar plan is a well-executed plan—and you and your staff won’t be left scrambling.
Protect Your Business Assets During Hurricane Season
- Protect Your People
Your employees are your company’s most important asset. So, be sure to have an evacuation plan, a communication plan, and a remote operations plan. Review employee policies to understand how payment and job leave will be handled in case your business has to close temporarily. Train a small group of employees to serve as the action team. These individuals can take on critical roles, if necessary, during a time of crisis.
- Protect Your Property
Take a walk around your property and look for the physical weak points. Protect your facilities and equipment from water, wind, and debris. Generators and batteries should be available to provide an uninterrupted power supply. Equipment, signage, and vehicles should be secured or moved to a covered location. And keep electronics safely stored in dry and well-protected areas.
- Backup Your Data
We can’t say enough about this last step: back up, back up, back up. Business operations could come to a complete halt without access to your company’s vital data. Make sure that onsite and cloud computer and server backups are performed regularly—and that any physical data is stored in a safe and secure facility. It may be necessary to transfer data to an alternate site for recovery after a storm. So, have that plan in place too. Or, employ a recovery services company or IT company to manage this process for you.
Trinity Solutions can help your business weather any storm! We offer comprehensive risk assessments, systematic business recovery plans, onsite and cloud data backup, and more!
Is Your Business Protected for Hurricane Season?
Trinity Solutions Offers Hurricane Preparedness Advice for Business Continuity
Call Us Today!