When you are just one person working from an office set up in your spare room, you can be forgiven for not thinking much about having a continuity plan for your business. But how would you cope if these things happened:
1.Power Outage
Starbucks anyone? Thankfully there are plenty of WiFi enabled places that offer an alternative working situation.
But what if the power outage was more widespread? What if it lasted for days?
If things got really serious, mobile phone towers would eventually run out of power, and so would water pumps. How would your business cope?
2. Unable to Access Your Premises
Solopreneurs tend to be pretty mobile, it is one of the draws of working in this way. But what if you lost your office space to a fire or a flood? What if you were stranded away on holiday unable to get back to your base? How would your business cope?
3.Serious Illness
If you are seriously ill, you can't (and nor should you) work. You have probably thought about this, or experienced this one already, but what would happen if this illness was more widespread? Your suppliers are impacted. Your clients are impacted. How would your business cope?
4.Cyber Breach
The fear of losing data haunts us daily! But what it is was worse than that, what if someone came in and stole it? What if they planted an evil virus to destroy your data, your applications, your hard drive. Chances are your files are safely backed up in the cloud. But what if the worst happened? How would your business cope?
- Have a list of backup freelancers who you can call to take over your work from you. That way your active projects get finished up and your customer relationships aren't affected.
- Post on your website and social media that you have had an emergency and normal service will resume as soon as possible (give an end date if have one).
- Send a newsletter explaining the situation.
- Take notes for the excellent blog post you can write about your experience once it is over!
You will only really understand the value of a backup plan once you need it. Don't wait until it's too late!
For more tips and tricks for Business Continuity Planning visit The Business Continuity Institute.
Business Continuity Awareness Week 2016 is running from 16th to 20th May with events around the world promoting and raising awareness in understanding the value of Business Continuity Planning.