Building resilience into an operation to deal with the consequences of an unexpected event is a normal part of enterprise risk management for larger organisations.
Disaster mitigation rarely receives any attention in smaller organisations until they are confronted with a serious event to deal with.
We offer our expertise to help smaller organisations formulate effective contingency planning policies.
We will also be pleased to step in and use our crisis management training to help any client manage a crisis they face. What is done in the first few hours of a crisis will often determine if the best possible outcome is achieved or not.
Most organisations have at least thought about what they would need to do is they suffered a major fire, flood, or theft incident that affected their ability to continue operating.
The acid test of how well you are prepared to manage such a clamatous crisis is to run through various scenarios to reflect on how you might manage the event. It will involve anticipating the immediate, interim, and long-term problems you will be forced to address as a result.
So, pretend let us pretend you arrive at work tomorrow to find your premises surrounded by emergency services as it burns to the ground. What follows is some typical challenges you will face as you step out of the car.
As the owner of the business, the fire service incident commander immediately approaches you to ask you about what fire evacuation plans you have in place. There is evidence of other people having arrived to begin work this morning but no one has yet been found outside the burning building. He is concerned there may be people still in the building and he is keen to learn of any dangerous or explosive materials that may be in the building as he was just briefing a team to go into the building to attempt a rescue.
The Fire Safety Regulations indicate you should be able to answer the incident commander's questions. Can you?
Five minutes later, you learn two of your employees have been rescued with serious burn injuries and are being take directly to hospital. Unfortunately, one other has been found dead. You are being asked by the Police now present, for the contact details of the next of kin. Can you provide it? Have you ever thought of how you would deal with the families of the injured and deceased?
There is a local TV film crew on site, and they ambush you asking for your comments on the developing tragedy. Handling the press in a crisis is a skilled job that requires great care. Telling them "no comment" is not the best answer you should offer. What would you say?
By now your other employees have started arriving. What are you going to say to them? Do you have a contingency plan to relocate your business operation to an alternative temporary office? Do you have the IT equipment and data back-up records to allow your staff to pick-up from where you were last night?
One nightmare we would not wish anyone to face, but it is planning for the worst case scenarios that can help deal with a crisis should you ever have the misfortune to suffer it.
All of the points highlighted above could happen, and your state of preparedness can so easily tested to ensure they work in practice. There is a good reason for carrying out regular practice emergency fire alarm evacuations. It could save a life one day.
Most of us do have some kind of back-up system for our essential business data, but have you ever tried testing whether you can recover the data you expect in practice? We know of one large financial services firm who spent a fortune on rigidly following a daily back-up routine at the close of business each day for years. When the need came one day to restore a mission-critical back-up, they discovered that no one in their IT-department could remember the final security password required to unlock the data files. It is the little things like that that can bring a company to its knees, which is what happened here.
- Critical software suddenly stops working.
- You lose your electric or Internet services for a prolonged period of time.
- Your system is hacked, and you know data has been stolen.
- You suddenly lose key personnel (for any number of reasons) whose knowledge proves essential to completing a critical business function.
- You are in funds, but your bank is unable to complete the transfers of salaries to all your staff until a week after the normal pay date.
- One of your staff assaults another member of staff and the Police become involved
- You discover one of your staff has emptied the contents of the wrong garage they were instructed to clear, and you have aggrieved owner standing in your office demanding a small fortune in compensation for their loss
- A key member of your professional staff is discovered to have lied about their qualifications
- You discover one of your regular customers has gone bust owing you a sizable debt that will mean you will struggle to pay your bills and salaries this month.
- Your business depends on the regular supply of key components from trusted suppliers, but they suddenly stop delivering affecting your ability to continue operating
- Thinking here of the ransom demand hacks suffered by JRL during September 2025, you are told by a key customer they are temporarily unable to accept the orders you have prepared for them that account for most of your turnover each month - What do you do?
One final example that highlights why contingency planning requires you to think outside the box and put aside contemporary thinking and normalised experience. In late 2019, our principal started his MSc course in Risk Management and Leadership and one of the topics they considered was the impact of a pandemic on the UK economy. In the approach to Christmas, the news was full of the growing concern over the spread of Covid in China. In the New Year he started making what limited provisions he could to protect his business interests and those of his clients in anticipation of the pandemic arriving in the UK. The first lock-down started on 26 March 2020.
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