The start of a new year is traditionally a good time to plan for the year ahead, setting business targets and forecasting sales. While of course it makes sense to do this, the focus shouldn’t just be on business growth, it should also be on business protection. All businesses need to be built on secure foundations in order to grow.

If you haven’t yet made your New Year’s resolution, make sure you plan to set some time aside over the Christmas period to look at all aspects of your business to determine how best to protect it.

Here are our top ten tips to get you started and set you on the right track to help you survive and thrive long term:

1. Undertake a risk assessment. This should cover every area of your business. If you’re unsure how to go about this, there are lots of online tools you can use as a guide or, if you have an insurance broker, they will be able to help you.
2. Check your business insurance. Do you have all the correct insurance in place? Has the business evolved since you originally organised your insurance and is it now adequately protected?
3. Calculate how much business interruption insurance you need. This is an area where it is very common to under-insure. This is because most businesses underestimate how long they will be unable to trade in the event of a disaster. The recommendation from theBritish Insurance Brokers Association is to budget for 24 months’ downtime.
4. Build a disaster recovery plan. If you don’t have one in place, start working on one before it’s too late. If you already have one, review it and make sure it’s still relevant and up to date.
5. Allocate roles so that your team know what to do in the event of a disaster.
6. Put 3 or 4 dates in the diary throughout 2019 for fire drills. Nothing is more important than the safety of your staff. Make sure they are familiar with the fire procedure and know whereto congregate if a fire breaks out during the working day.
7. Test your disaster recovery plan. This should be broader than a fire drill and cover all areas of the business. Only by putting it to the test will you know if it is robust enough and whether it covers everything it needs to.
8. Develop a communications plan. This should cover communications to your employees and a customer contact strategy.In the immediate aftermath of a disaster it is critical that you get in touch with your key customers to put them in the picture and reassure them about how you will fulfil orders. It doesn’t take long for competitors to find out about events of this nature and seek out opportunities to steal customers.
9. Make sure your data is backed up offsite. Your data is one of your most valuable assets and, if you lost it, it would be very difficult to recreate it. The faster it can be restored, the sooner you can get back to business as usual.
10. Review the protection measures you have in place for your premises. What do you have to protect your offices against physical harm: burglar and fire alarm systems; shutters or blinds for windows; sprinkler system; deadlocks; fire doors; flood defences. Again, if you use a broker, they should be able to guide you through this.

Follow these steps and you’ll be setting your business on the right footing for 2019. Here’s to a prosperous and successful New Year!