As a small business owner, evaluating potential risks should be a priority. By knowing where hazards lie, you can create a disaster -preparedness  plan, ensuring your business can bounce back quickly following any incident. For a better understanding of why risk assessment is essential, read below.  

What Risk Assessment Entails

To ensure the disaster preparation plan covers all bases, first identify any potential threats to the company’s continued business survival, security, and employee safety. This could include, for example, natural disasters, man made events that could impact your business, cyber-attacks that could result in data loss, theft of valuable property, and injuries sustained from unsafe working conditions.

Next, determine what the impact to your business might be if any of these potential threats do manifest. Once you have determined what the most likely hazards are that your business would face, and you have evaluated the level of impact  each hazard poses, you should develop a plan to take steps to mitigate the impact of the hazards to your business. Anything that can be done before a harmful event occurs that will lessen the impact to your business should be considered and included in your plan.  The next step is to develop the response portion of your plan.  What will you do if something does happen. How should your employees act and what steps need to be taken immediately to preserve life and property.  These steps should be simple, precise, and achievable.  Staff needs to be trained on exactly what their responsibilities are, and drills and exercises for these situations are essential to the survival of your business.

How It Will Benefit Your Business

Conducting a risk assessment, also called a Threat and Hazard Analysis can save your business money. By identifying the most likely hazards and threats in advance, you can plan and budget for the needed mitigating steps you need to take.  The cost of taking these steps is very often far less than the cost of recovery after a destructive event, and the recovery and return to normal business operations will be much easier and faster.

Why would you not take these steps to preserve your business?  

For professional help with your risk assessment and creating a disaster preparation plan, contact the professionals at Command Solutions in O'Fallon, MO. Our team provides everything you need to become fully prepared.  From basic fire safety and prevention and first aid – CPR training, to complete business continuity, emergency response plan development, and crisis leadership training, we serve companies throughout St. Louis and the Metro East area. To learn how we can help build your disaster preparation plan, call (314) 803-7418. You can also find information about our training classes and webinars online and read about how our team has assisted other small businesses on Facebook.