I have worked with the Arvada Chamber of Commerce and Samantha Geerdes for the last few years giving a presentation to their Business Bootcamp along with Lisa Smith of Team Rubicon (and Arvada City Councilmember) and Commander Betsy Westbrook of the Arvada Police Department on Emergency Preparedness. My section of the talk has been on creating business emergency preparedness plans. Then Lisa follows that up with wildfire disaster preparedness and an extremely helpful roundtable exercise. We close out with Commander Westbrook discussing safety and business and the resources businesses can utilize through the Arvada police department.
I realized that, in this most recent presentation, I had not yet done a blog about Emergency Plans. In practice, I emphasize these plans with solo business owners, but these are relevant for all businesses.
We are going to have a two-part blog post on creating emergency plans for your business. This post looks at the first major step and the follow-up will look at the second major step.
The first step of creating an emergency plan is determining your “W”s. We only focus on three of the W’s here: What, Who, and Where (When is implied – in an emergency – and Why is also implied – because there is an emergency).
The first step for the business owner is to determine What emergency for which this plan is preparing. I don’t recommend that businesses have a plan for every emergency – that would be an unnecessary use of time and resources. Instead, I recommend planning for emergencies that would be the most likely or most devastating for your particular business. What would be the most likely to shut you down for a month? What would be the most likely to use all of your expenses? If there is an unexpected emergency, the odds are good that by simply modifying your existing emergency plan, you are prepared to handle it.
Once you have your big “What”, you want to look at your smaller “What”s. What is most likely to go wrong if that emergency happens. What is the effect on your business? What is likely to go wrong as that emergency is unfolding. Once you have your “What”s, you will be better prepared to confront the emergency and plan how to deal with it.
The next step is to determine Who is involved in the emergency. This includes those directly affected (the members of your team, mostly), those who will help you get back on your feet (service professionals), and those indirectly affected (customers, clients, family members, indirect team members).
Anyone directly affected and who will help get you back on your feet should be in the conversation about your emergency plan. They will be the ones who need to spring into action to avert the emergency. The indirectly affected do not need to be part of the plan – they have no role in fixing the issue. They will need to be considered in the plan, in case they need to be notified if the problem can’t be fixed before they are affected or in case it requires minor changes, but they don’t contribute to the creation of the plan.
As a final step before actually crafting the plan, you need to consider the Where. A where may look different for each different emergency. Where is the necessary information kept? Where is the emergency happening? Where is the safety rendezvous point? Where is the backup? The one where that is the same for all emergency plans: where is the emergency plan for you to reference. Are you keeping it in one hard-to-find place? Is it easily accessible by all members of the response team? Can you reference it even if you have to leave your office? Remember that these plans need to be usable.
Once you have your three W’s, you have a great outline for your emergency plan and what you need to address. Now it is time to craft the actual plan with the team you have gathered.
Want help in determining your 3 W’s? Feel free to reach out to us at admin@lawpolaris.com to schedule a complimentary initial consult.
