With all the recent disasters and disruptions, most New Zealand households now have some form of emergency kit on hand – but is your business prepared to keep moving through a crisis?

When standard communication channels are down and ‘work-as-we-know-it’ has come to a halt, it is important to have a strategy in place to keep your business ticking over. It’s also paramount for the health of a business to ensure communication lines with both staff and clients are kept open through a crisis.

For big corporations, this is often taken care of by a designated Crisis Management Lead. In the hour of need, a plan will come into action whereby clients are informed of any impact to the business’s services and employees kept up-to-date with the status of the business and requirements in regards to work. A text alert system (SMS) will often be used to get these emergency related comms out.

Smaller and medium sized businesses should consider having a business continuity plan in place and designating leaders who can make decisions and communicate these in an emergency. As we saw with the recent cyclone, disasters can strike at any time, and it is best to be as prepared as we can be. At a time when your focus may be elsewhere, this will also help alleviate stress for business owners and management.

To allow our clients to get their disaster prep done without adding more workload to the team, Freerange Works offers business continuity plans as part of our service. The plan will include identifying a channel for communicating with employees and clients in an emergency, as well as detailing methods for enabling critical services or products to be delivered to your clients throughout the crisis period, if applicable to your business.

If required, the plan can include steps for an immediate response to an emergency, including all necessary contact details, such as for staff members, emergency services, insurance providers, utility providers and building management. It may also include contingency plans such as, a plan for relocating the office, or for changing to a remote working system.

Crucially, this should not be seen as a disaster recovery plan but a way to keep the business operational through unforeseen events, with all the information necessary to do so in one place. Having such a plan can help with peace of mind in the good times – and may be a lifeline when the going gets rough. To get your business continuity plan in place, email sarah@freerangeworks.co.nz.