Specialist business support

Is your business prepared? 

No matter how well your business is doing, disasters can happen at any time to any organisation big or small. These issues could be internal or external, for example:

• natural disasters such as flooding or snow

• staffing disruptions, e.g. internal or external industrial action, a pandemic

• utilities failure

• technology failures, including hacking

How would you cope if the worst happened? Being more prepared can give a competitive advantage to your business. A wide range of useful advice is available from Staffordshire Prepared. 

Quick and easy preparation

• Ensure you have prepared for cyber threats.

• Make sure you have suitable business insurance, the Association of British Insurers provides useful advice and information.

More advanced preparations

• Complete a free Business Resilience Health Check to receive a report outlining the actions that you should address to give you a good starting poing to develop a practical and coherent business continuity plan (This can take up to 1.5 hours to complete).

• Write a Business Continuity Plan to reduce the impacts from potential emergencies and ensure all staff are aware of this plan and know their responsibilities in an emergency.

• Check how prepared your business is using the government’s Business Continuity Management Toolkit.

• Consider communicating with local businesses about your plans and how you could support each other.

• Flooding is one of the most common and costly natural disasters. Find out more about how to prepare your business for a flood.

Our responsibilities

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004, places a duty on us, as a category 1 responder, to provide local businesses (including voluntary organisations) with advice on business continuity management.

Every organisation, whether in the public, private or voluntary sector, should review their activities and consider the threats it faces. Steps can then be made to plan and protect the business before any of these threats materialise.

That way your organisation is significantly more likely to recover and return to ‘business as usual’. Any disruption to normal business activities can affect customer relationships and your reputation. More information is available from Staffordshire Prepared.