Statistics suggest that as many as 80% of businesses hit with a major disaster don’t recover. A disaster is defined as an unexpected event, caused either by natural or human activity. Natural disasters are caused primarily by extreme weather events, such as floods or a lightning strike. Those caused by human activity can be either wilful or accidental and include arson and terrorist attacks.

While you can’t predict what the future holds, you can plan ahead and take precautions to ensure that, if you are hit with a disaster, you give your business the best chance of recovery. We know from experience that the faster a business is able to get basic services back up and running, the better its chance of full recovery long term.

If something happens during office hours, such as a fire, the first five minutes should be focused on ensuring the safety of your employees. Make sure they are all accounted for and then look at securing business assets and limiting damage.

The actions you take in the first 24 hours will have a huge impact on determining whether your business survives long term. In our experience, competitors waste no time in contacting the customers of their rivals to see if they “can step in and help while their usual supplier is shut temporarily”. Of course, in reality their intention is to keep that customer and it’s this loss of business that causes a business to struggle financially before shutting down completely.

Develop a plan that considers all aspects of your business. Appoint a disaster recovery team or main contact, usually the key person or managers in the business, and allocate clear roles and responsibilities. Starting with a risk assessment, identify the business functions that are critical to keeping the business running, whether that’s IT, data, people or equipment. By understanding what’s important, you can build a plan that put processes in place to protect those aspects.

Once you have a plan, test it to see how robust it is. Only by putting it through its paces will you uncover any gaps. A test also gives your employees a chance to familiarise themselves with emergency procedures, hopefully minimising problems escalating during a real disaster situation.

Finally, once you have a disaster recovery plan, don’t just lock it away. Make sure everyone knows where it’s stored and has access to it. Treat it as a living document – as your business changes, so should the plan.