- The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance to business owners of planning for unexpected crises
- Business continuity planning helps identify potential threats to your company operations and take steps to mitigate them
- Creating alternative ways to keep business operations going, establishing employee roles during a crisis, and more
Summary by Dirk Langeveld
The COVID-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call for businesses about the importance of planning for the worst. Small businesses proved particularly vulnerable to the disruptions created by the pandemic and associated shutdown orders, in part because many of them only had enough cash on hand to cover a few months of operations.
Business owners can help mitigate the impact of disruptions through business continuity planning, which identifies potential threats that will impact your company and how to respond to them. Patrick Shanahan, CEO of the management software company DaySmart, recently wrote about the topic in Entrepreneur.
- Business continuity planning helps stabilize earnings during disruptive events, which include everything from property damage to the departure of a key employee
- A plan should include alternatives for how a business can remain in operation during disruptions
- One benefit of business continuity planning is that employees are given clear guidance on their role in a crisis
- Numerous digital tools are available to help businesses continue after a disruption
Find out more about this topic in our Expert Summary “Contingency Planning: Dealing with Surprise Disruptions.”
