25th January, 2024
Australian and New Zealand small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly factoring natural disasters into their business planning.
Late last year a survey of 1000 business owners and operators found, in the 12 months, one in ten (11 per cent) were impacted by a natural disaster and a quarter (26 per cent) were preparing for one¹.
Parts of the country have already faced severe natural disasters this season, with more expected before the summer ends.
If you haven’t already, now is the time for business owners to put plans in place to stay safe and productive as they can, even in extreme weather conditions.
It’s vital to prepare, ensuring protection for people, products and intellectual property.
It may seem overwhelming, but there are some measures business owners can take to ensure you’re equipped in case of business disruption.
The safety of your people is the number one priority in the case of any disaster, so look at the alert and evacuation procedures you have in place, and make sure all employees are aware of procedures to follow.
Extreme temperatures also pose a risk to the health of workers. If there’s no mandated temperature at which workers should down tools in your industry, it comes down to what’s reasonable in every setting.
Remember workplace health and safety requirements mean you need to keep your people safe from heat stress and heat-related illness.
Heat can also have a significant impact on worker productivity. A study on the effects of temperature on productivity found every degree over 24 degrees celsius decreases productivity, so it pays to keep your people cool.
Check your current climate control systems are robust enough to handle the heat, and that they are energy efficient to avoid skyrocketing energy costs and emissions over the summer.
Check the fine print of your business insurance. Are you covered for damages in the case of a natural disaster?
Are you confident about business continuity in the face of flood, fire or anything else you may be at risk of?
If you’re in a location that’s likely to be impacted it’s particularly important to check your insurance covers potential losses.
Speak with your insurer to get clear on what your business is covered for, and pressure-test your policy.
While we hope for the best, we need to prepare for the worst, and having communication plans ready will help with distributing updates.
This could include having drafted messages ready in the case of an unexpected shut-down, or a delay in services or product supply due to extreme weather.
It might also include internal communications for your employees around how they can keep themselves safe. You can also notify them if they need to be prepared to work in another location at short notice.
Create a critical contacts document that includes emergency service details and important business contacts.
This should include those within your organisation, as well as clients and partner businesses who may need to be alerted.
Plan out every likely scenario and get your communications ready, to alleviate a last-minute scramble.
Is your business-critical data safe? In a digital world, it’s important to backup critical data to the cloud or a remote server. This helps ensure disruption to your onsite tech doesn’t mean damage to your data.
Create a secure digital vault for your business-critical information and documentation. This means you’ll be in a strong position to continue trading, even if the physical environment is uncertain.
Whether summer is a slow period for your business or one of your busiest trading seasons, spend some time forecasting the potential impact of extreme weather on your customers and cashflow.
You could be expecting a busy sale period but your warehouse staff or suppliers are impacted by extreme weather. Think about how you might manage customer expectations ahead of time, including potential delays in dispatch or delivery.
If your business is likely to be affected by extreme weather, for example tourism or hospitality businesses in a high-risk area, it pays to do some conservative planning around cashflow and reduced customer numbers.
If recent years have taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected.
Extreme weather is becoming the new normal, and every business has the potential to be impacted. This is especially so for those in areas where natural disasters and extreme conditions are more likely to occur.
Involve your people in planning and have conversations about potential impact. Your workers might not be directly affected by extreme weather, but their families and loved ones could be. So be compassionate about the additional stress extreme weather events could cause.
Whatever happens, preparation and planning is the key to your ongoing business success.
Information provided in this article is of a general nature and does not consider your personal situation. It does not constitute legal, financial, or other professional advice and should not be relied upon as a statement of law, policy or advice. You should consider whether this information is appropriate to your needs and, if necessary, seek independent advice. This information is only accurate at the time of publication. Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of the information contained on this webpage, MYOB disclaims, to the extent permitted by law, all liability for the information contained on this webpage or any loss or damage suffered by any person directly or indirectly through relying on this information.
This article originally appeared here.