Workplace disasters can happen anywhere and at any time. Your company should have a documented IT disaster recovery plan in place to protect your business. When there is a strategy in place, after an unexpected event occurs, you will have peace of mind knowing you have a well-thought-out plan to keep your company and your people safe and get back to business quickly.
Four Impacts to Your Business Without an IT Disaster Recovery Plan
You most likely have protection for your business, yourself, your vehicles, and your employees. Still, you also need an IT disaster recovery plan in place for your business’s day-to-day operations. The data and materials that go into defining what and who you are as a business needs protection in the event of a disaster. There are four significant impacts your company could suffer without an IT disaster recovery plan in place.
- Data loss. You can lose your data in several ways, such as a natural disaster, human error, or a security breach. Suffering a complete loss of your data will be devastating. Depending on the size of your business, this loss could amount to thousands or millions of dollars.
- Interruption of business means a loss of revenue. When your business operations are interrupted, you not only lose income, you lose employee productivity. Any downtime your company suffers results in lost money.
- Loss of customers will occur when you cannot handle their services or provide their products. Your customers have needs, and when you no longer supply those needs, they will be forced to find other sources.
- Recovery is expensive. The costs involved with data loss are affected by several factors such as expenses to rekey data, the cost of replacing hardware, loss of daily profits, and your employee’s productivity falling. Without an IT disaster recovery plan in place, you could lose your business.
IT Disaster Recovery Plan Protects People First
Your main concern during a disaster is going to be keeping your business running as normal as possible. Knowing which projects are on the table that will suffer the most, and how to keep them flowing will be necessary. You will also want to have an idea of what it will take to get your systems back up to speed.
These are considerations that will need immediate attention, but you also have to ensure your employees are having their needs addressed. Part of your IT disaster recovery plan should include these steps:
- Having your employee’s contact information updated and be able to access it easily
- Contact your employee’s and ensure they are accounted for and safe
- Allow for special accommodations if necessary, such as flexible hours or working remotely
- Keep employees informed
- Remain flexible as not everyone will be in the same situation. Everyone is an individual and will have unique needs and situations
IT Disaster Recovery Plan for Your Business
You want to be able to keep your business machine running. Once you’ve taken care of employees’ needs, there are critical business functions you will have to address. With an IT disaster recovery plan in place, you should be ready to move forward with these considerations:
- Your plan should outline which areas of your business are top priority, and include a strategy to keep them operational. One example would be having a backup plan on how to process accounts and payroll
- Make sure all management teams understand the functions which business-critical and know how to manage them
- Along with a top-priority list, there should be a low-priority list that your teams know can wait to be addressed until a later time
- If there is going to be downtime for employees, and they are not going to be able to return to their workplace, you should know how that time-off will be paid. When a disaster strikes, you don’t want to have to make these types of decisions as your IT disaster recovery plan should have the situation spelled out
- If the disaster is affecting how you handle customer accounts or services, your IT disaster recovery plan should include how and when you will alert those customers of your situation
IT Disaster Recovery Plan and Who You Can Count OnWhen a crisis or disaster hits, whether it is caused by workplace disturbance, a natural event, or something else, you want an IT disaster recovery plan in place so your business survives. John Brendle Consulting has the tools and experience to help you set your company up with the protection you need.
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