When starting your small business, it is essential to consider all possible emergencies your business could encounter. Whether natural disasters or cyber attacks, you must take appropriate measures to ensure that your business is well-prepared for any potential emergencies that could result in significant financial impacts.
Steps to Prepare
Approximately 25% of businesses remain permanently closed following an emergency. Your business will not be one of them by taking the following steps:
Assess all possible emergencies.
Depending on where your business is established, there will be a wide range of possible emergencies it could encounter. Awareness of what emergencies could impact your business will allow you to prepare more and ensure that your business will have a smooth recovery and resume operations as quickly as possible.
Even if your business is fully remote, emergencies include natural disasters such as hurricanes, flash floods, wildfires, and even cyber-attacks. Prior knowledge of risk factors that can impact your business is crucial for your business to function properly.
Create an Emergency Response Plan
Your business may fail to recover without an adequate emergency response plan. Your response plan should focus on what is most essential to your business so that immediate priorities and concerns can be addressed in the event of an emergency.
The IRS guide on preparing your business for a disaster and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) emergency preparedness checklist and toolkit are resources you will want to utilize to the best of your ability.
Get Financial Assistance
Your business may be eligible to receive low-interest disaster recovery loans through the SBA. Loan payments could cover repair and replacement costs for equipment, machinery, business assets, and more.
Find out if loans apply to you by checking the following:
Protect Your Data
Lost or corrupted data is a significant issue for modern companies, and backing up your data is only helpful if set up before disaster strikes. Therefore, it is crucial to back up your data regularly. Additionally, implementing a data recovery plan can help keep your business running with minimal downtime in case of a data breach.
Learn More: Optimizing Cybersecurity for Your Small Business
Any emergency can result in substantial damage to your business. Properly preparing for potential risks will strengthen your business’s best chance of survival.
