Why Your Business Must Learn From The Impact Of Flooding

Posted By on November 8th, 2019

Flooding can be one of the most devastating things to happen to a property. Whether that be your business premises or your home. Water damage can cause irreparable damage to possessions and have far reaching consequences for the building itself. 

For a business it can mean significant interruption to your business continuity whilst you undergo disaster recovery efforts.

What impact can flooding have on business premises?

Flooding can have wide ranging impacts on business premises:

  • Water damage to the building and interiors
  • Ruined stock 
  • Endangering employees
  • Loss of income due to having to close premises for remedial work

Disaster recovery following a flood can be a long process involving many different elements. And if your business premises are situated in a flood risk area, it is likely to be a risk which presents itself again unfortunately. It is therefore vital that, in order to minimise any impact of flooding, that you learn from prior events and feed this into your disaster recovery planning.

Why is it important to learn from the impact of flooding?

It is unlikely given the changes we are seeing in the frequency of extreme weather events that flooding is a risk that is going to go away. If anything, it is a risk which is only going to increase. 

Therefore, any efforts which can be made to minimise the impact of flooding will always be positive.

Whilst much of this will be reliant on infrastructure changes and major engineering solutions, there are also some things you can look to do as a business to learn from the impact of flooding and aid disaster recovery:

  • Make use of any predictive technology which is available when it comes to flood risk. This will give you the best chance of preparing your business to respond
  • Take action before you’re hit by a flood to minimise damage to contents e.g. storing possessions up high, or removing them from the building entirely
  • Take steps to rebuild flood damaged premises in a way which creates better resistance to flooding (with support from your insurer)
  • Ensure you are prepared and able to communicate efficiently if flooding should strike. Having an effective and practised disaster recovery plan in place should aid this.

Flooding is one of the key risk factors which you should include in your disaster recovery planning as a business. Therefore, it is vital to use any information that can help to inform your strategy when it comes to coping if flooding should strike. Learning from prior events and aiming to take steps to put your business in the best possible position to cope should be at the top of your agenda.