Ensuring Business Continuity: Smart Risk Management Tools for Success

A comprehensive guide on implementing risk management tools to maintain business operations during crises, from risk assessment to employee preparation and data protection.  

The following is a guest post from my bloggy friend Megan Isola. Interested in having a guest post on my website? Click here for my guest post submission form.

Protect What You’ve Built: Smart Risk Management for Entrepreneurs

Implementing smart risk management tools for your business will allow you to remain resilient when your organization experiences instability. Developing a wide range of tools that allow critical business operations to remain intact, even when faced with a threat, is vital to your business’s stability and growth. A strong business continuity strategy will identify any potential risks your company may face, identify steps to take if a crisis occurs, establish a mobilization plan, and manage recovery and mitigation efforts.

Thoroughly Assess Risks to Your Business

Identify any threats that can halt operations in your business in order to develop a plan that allows you to take action immediately when such a threat occurs. The scope of potential threats to your business operations may include problems with cyber security or equipment failure, supply chain issues, or weather emergencies. As you assess the risks your company may face, it is important to assess how these potential issues will impact the safety of your employees, the satisfaction of customers, and your overall revenue. Your ability to assess risk will have a direct impact on the success of your business when it comes time to mitigate any risks that you encounter.

Create a Plan to Cover Essential Business Functions in a Crisis

Once you identify the essential business functions of your company, creating a detailed plan in the event of a crisis is going to make your business resilient. Safety protocols for the protection of your employees, customer service essentials, and the IT infrastructure in place will all need a plan in place to implement in the event of a crisis. As you develop this plan, understand that you are working to ensure that the business can keep running, even in disaster mode. The plan to cover essential business functions will often include addressing the IT system by using a secondary system and creating operating procedures that can be used when the primary procedures are not possible.

Look for Input From a Variety of Sources

Employees, people in your community, investors, and customers may all play a role in the development of your risk management tools when you look for input from a wide range of sources. As the plan is created, a collaborative strategy will make it easier for people to align with the plan if it needs to be used in a crisis. With stakeholders or employees participating in the planning, you are more likely to have people who share responsibility for the success of the risk management plan once it is implemented.

Prepare Employees in the Event of a Crisis

All employees should be aware of their role in the event of a crisis within your business. Training should always include what to do in an emergency, how to maintain contact with others on the team, and how best to manage in the event of a crisis. When employees are trained regarding their role in a crisis, the plan becomes much easier to implement quickly. As time goes on, practicing drills as if a disaster has occurred will keep everyone prepared for an emergency. As employees feel confident in using a disaster plan, your organization is going to be that much more resilient in the event a crisis happens.

Look for Problems With Your Plan

Smart risk management tools include testing your current plan to look for any problems with the implementation and execution of your plan. You will be able to identify where communication issues occur and find challenges that you didn’t uncover when you were creating the plan. Simulating several different crisis scenarios will keep your staff prepared, and it becomes possible to make small changes to existing risk management tools once issues are uncovered.

Keep Your Risk Management Tools Updated

There will come a time when new risks for your business develop, and the risk management tools you have in place must meet these changes. You may need to update your continuity plan to ensure that it remains consistent with the technology and regulations that change over time. For example, incorporating HVAC software into your risk management plan can help you remotely monitor and control HVAC systems, ensuring that they function properly even during a crisis. As you review risk management tools, effectiveness can only be measured if they are relevant to the processes you already have in place. When you have an updated risk management plan, you are going to be able to move quickly in the event of a crisis.

Provide Clear Communication Around Risk Management Tools

A smart risk management plan can only be effective when everyone involved knows of the plan and can implement their role within the plan. You will want to keep all employees and investors updated on any roles they may have in the event a disaster plan must be executed. If there is a disruption that requires mitigation, solid communication is going to keep everyone on task to get through the difficult time. Build confidence in your risk management tools by providing routine updates, consistent training sessions, and an accessible way for anyone to view the plan as needed.

Keep Your Business Data Backed Up

If your business experiences an emergency, you will want to know that you have all the critical data backed up to prevent data loss. If you suffer a data breach or you lose data, customers are going to lose trust in your business. Off-site data storage is also important as if you have a disaster within your business, you will still be able to protect the critical data you have collected. Keep your business running smoothly when you can protect data, ensuring that your IT systems run on a secondary system if necessary.

Review Your Plan After a Crisis

After your business experiences a disruption and responds to it, carefully review your response once the threat is over. Look for ways that the plan worked successfully, and identify problem areas that can be improved for the future. Take the time to learn from your mistakes to be better prepared in the future. Feedback from all employees and any investors that are involved to establish how effective your risk management tools were.

Stay prepared in the event of an emergency by implementing smart risk management tools that work. Practice your emergency response strategies, and always identify ways that you can improve your plan for the future. A resilient business is one that can stay consistent through a crisis and come out stronger once the crisis has been managed.

About the Author

Megan Isola holds a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality and a minor in Business Marketing from Cal State University Chico. She enjoys going to concerts, trying new restaurants, and hanging out with friends.