Partner Article

Flooding: the importance of business continuity planning

As the Environment Agency has issued nearly 225 flood warnings and 300 flood alerts across the UK, there is an immediate need for businesses up and down the country to consider whether they have adequate business continuity plans in place.

Businesses in the North of England are being warned by the Met Office to prepare for flooding as it is expecting between 30 and 40mm of rain falling in many areas and up to 70mm of rain in parts of North East England. There is currently an amber weather warning in place in Wales, Yorkshire, the North East and the Humber, while the terrible weather has already hit the South West and the Midlands over the weekend.

Flooding can severely affect and disrupt many businesses with power failures, loss of data and absent staff. Organisations must have robust protocols in place to ensure business continuity, whether this is an accessible workplace recovery centre to ensure minimal disruption to business operation or cloud storage solutions to protect against data loss and allow data to be accessed off site. This means that while businesses may not be able to predict crises, they will have the reassurance of a continuity plan that will ensure trading can continue even if their premises are temporarily unusable or IT systems become damaged.

Business continuity is about making sure that, no matter what happens, a business can carry on as usual. As the current flooding is demonstrating, organisations in less resilient sites need to consider staff relocation, how they would cope if their current premises were temporarily unavailable and, for example, the possibility of a server being flooded, resulting in a loss of data.

To ensure that businesses keep running during a natural disaster, I would always recommend that they invest in a workplace recovery model. This will back up all of a company’s data off-site in various datacentres that can be accessed nationwide, and will also provide an alternative, fully equipped workplace for staff when they can’t enter their normal place of work.

As the Government has just declined a not-for-profit insurance fund aimed at reducing premiums for businesses and homes at high risk from flooding, the peace of mind that a workplace recovery centre is available to ensure continual business operation while a premise is being repaired or restored is even more important.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Neil Stephenson .