Preparing Your Business

Emergencies can happen anywhere at any time.
 
Businesses are exposed to a multitude of hazards and vulnerabilities, from hazardous material and chemical incidents to major accidents and pandemics, terrorist activity, structural fires etc. Natural disasters in particular are inevitable, unpredictable, and significantly impact communities and the economy.
 
It is important to plan ahead for such events, which have the potential to significantly affect the viability of businesses both small and large. Amongst other things they can cause:

• Physical damage to buildings
• Damage to or breakdown of machinery, systems, data, or equipment
• Restricted access to a site or building
• Interruption of the supply chain including failure of a supplier or disruption of transportation of goods from the supplier
• Utility outage (e.g., electrical power outage)

Even where businesses can navigate or altogether avoid these direct impacts, they can still suffer from the absenteeism of essential employees who were affected by the emergency, a short-term or sustained decline in revenue, and additional expenses.

To ensure your business is prepared as it can be, we recommend the following: 

• Think about what emergencies could occur in your area(s) of operation, assess how likely it is that they could occur and how they could affect your business.
• Conduct a business impact analysis to identify the most critical functions and how long they can be taken offline (maximum acceptable outage).
• Examine ways to prevent the identified hazards and reduce risks, taking into account the results of your risk assessment and business impact analysis, and the anticipated costs.
• Get insured, but remember that whilst insurance provides some financial surety, it does not always cover all costs and cannot replace lost trade.
• Prepare emergency response and business continuity plans that will guide your actions in an emergency and help in making decisions about recovery priorities to restore business operations. In doing so, don’t only think about the physical rebuilding or replacement, also think about:
  • The most appropriate course of protective action in different situations. For example, where there is a hazard inside a building, such as a fire, occupants of the building should be evacuated / relocated to safety. Whereas a chemical accident nearby could warrant a ‘shelter in place’ response. Each response requires different planning and resources, so it is wise to give thought to them before an emergency occurs.
  • How trade can be restored.
  • How to aid the recovery of your staff who may have been personally affected by the emergency, or are physically or emotionally drained.
• Train your staff in your emergency response and business continuity plans. Practice them too.

If you business is affected by an emergency, please register your details with Council. The support available will differ from one emergency to another, depending on the scale and severity and the level of state and federal resources made available, but if we know that your business has been affected we can advocate for recovery support services. The collation of data regarding who has been affected by an emergency also assists us in the long-term risk minimisation and preparedness for future emergencies.

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Did you know...?

CFA has a range of tools and templates, which may assist in the development of emergency response and business continuity plans:
http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/firesafety/buildingandregulations/emergency-plans.htm
 
CPA Australia has also developed a toolkit to assist businesses that are both directly and indirectly affected by disasters: http://www.cpaaustralia.com.au/cps/rde/xbcr/cpa-site/disaster-recovery-toolkit.pdf

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