Hurricane Irene Is Over, So Barring Locusts, Business Recovery and Clean Up Can Begin

In just a few days, the East Coast was struck by an earthquake and Hurricane Irene. As one colleague put it: What’s next, a swarm of locusts? Hopefully, all that is next for businesses adversely impacted by these events is cleaning-up and recovering so that normal operations can resume as quickly as possible.

Companies should have in place not  just a disaster plan before a crisis hits (see here, here and here) but also a “business recovery” plan for a post-crisis response that: (1) assesses damage to property, contents and systems that occur after an unexpected event like an earthquake or hurricane that has disrupted all or part of the business process; and (2) provides steps to restore normal business operations. Here are some specific steps to consider:

1. Mobilizing a Business Recovery Team. A business recovery team should be established and notified immediately following an emergency that seriously affects one or more of the business’ normal business processes.
2. Assessing Extent of Damage and Business Impact. Once the business recovery team is mobilized, the first task is to assess the extent of the damage and the impact on the business processes.
3. Preparing a Specific Recovery Plan. Following the business impact assessment phase, a recovery plan needs to be prepared identifying those areas that need to be addressed immediately, and prioritizing the sequence of events required for the recovery process to proceed.
4. Monitoring Progress. A business recovery team leader should closely monitor progress of the individual recovery tasks during this phase. It is also important to ensure that each task is properly resourced and that the efforts required to restore normal business operations have been properly assessed.
5. Information Distribution. During the business recovery phase it is extremely important that all affected entities are kept properly and fully informed, such as board of directors, management and staff, customers, appropriate authorities or industry regulatory bodies, insurance broker/loss adjustors, suppliers and vendors, and contracted staff. A particularly important area to be considered is notifying customers about the impact on delivery of services. In addition, interaction with news media agencies may be critical in a serious disaster situation.
6. Normal Business Resumption. Once normal business operations have been restored, the business recovery team will transfer responsibilities for specific operations back to the regular management process. This process should be formalized in order to ensure that all parties understand the change in overall responsibility. Inevitably, the regular management will be fully involved throughout, but in order for the recovery process to be fully effective, overall responsibility during the recovery period should probably be with the business recovery team.

These tips and a lot more are in the HR Guide to Business Continuity Planning, a comprehensive instructional volume on how to keep your organization functioning in the event of a catastrophic event, including hurricanes, power failures and flooding.

Regarding any potential swarm of locusts, all I can recommend is to stock up on bug spray and mosquito netting.