Business Emergency Planning

In the past I have posted articles about being personally prepared for an emergency, and my focus was specifically on 72 hour kits and evacuations, whether because of an emergency in your home or a more widespread emergency in the community.

As we have seen in this past couple of weeks, it is very important to be prepared personally, but it also important to have your business prepared for a disaster.

Developing The Plan
Here are some points to consider when developing your Emergency response Plan or Business Continuity Plan:

 - Identify the purpose of your business, who you serve and what you do for them.

 - Identify the critical services you must provide and the resources you need to provide them.

 - Identify the most probable disasters, such as fire, flood, snow storm, electricity outage, phone service outage, lack of staff (sick or can’t travel…).

 - Look at the impacts of the disasters on your business.  Many impacts can be grouped into a few categories: 

• no reduction in resources, 
• a reduction in resources, 
• complete or almost complete lack of resources.

 - These impacts then determine what you can do:

Graduation Speech For Today

Rick Spence has written an article in the Financial Post about what he would say to grad today if he were asked to give the key note address.  Rick is a Marketing Consultant specializing in helping small businesses.

You can check out his whole article in the link.

A few highlights:

You are a free agent
You are a small cog emerging from a big bureaucratic machine. Most of you will soon exchange your student number for an employee ID badge. But you don't have to be a cog. Think of yourself as a free agent, choosing where and how you work. A job is not your life, just a contract. Many new opportunities will present themselves. Some will be dressed as job offers; others disguise themselves as business opportunities, bad bosses, new technologies or career roadblocks. To stick with one job or one employer is to settle for a