Things Organizations Should Think About:

3  Things Organizations Should Think About:

1.  Understand the Risks

Organizations should think through all possible disaster scenarios.  Every type of emergency from natural disasters to terrorist attacks to an armed intruder should be considered and planned for.  The response to a natural disaster would be very different from an armed intruder but some of the basic elements may be the same.  Understanding all possible risks helps ensure sufficient planning is done.

2.  Business Recovery

A plan should be developed to ensure business operations can resume as quickly as possible.  This should include a plan to recover computer systems, communication processes and all necessary business operations.  Small business disaster recovery is the goal.

3.  Recovery Kit

Every organization should have an emergency recovery kit that is housed somewhere away from the business or organization’s physical building.  This kit would contain information that can be used to help jump start operations.  Things that might be included in the kit are things like copies of insurance policies, phone lists of key employee/vendors, disaster manual, computer programs and back up computer drives.

Emergency management planning is time intensive and many organizations struggle with carving out the time to plan.  However, any organization that has been through an emergency or crisis would attest that the time spent on the front end is well worth the order that comes from having a well written, documented plan that merely needs to be executed.

Have you put together your emergency management and disaster recovery plan?