Every business wants to ensure the safety of its staff and customers, which is why having a disaster management plan is vital.
While thinking about worst-case scenarios is a difficult thing to do, managing the consequences is much, much worse.
A detailed disaster management plan will not only put measures in place to prevent incidents but also manage scenarios when incidents do occur to minimise the impact.
Here are some tips on how your enterprise can put together or optimise a disaster management plan in the modern era to be as prepared as possible.
Assess the threats as the first part of your disaster management plan
It is important to identify every possible threat that could impact your business operations in your industry.
The weather in Australia over recent months has highlighted the need to factor in natural disasters. Widespread bushfires, flooding, hail – Australia has seen it all.
It is also vital to factor in non-environmental threats which can include attacks on your business (bomb threats, burglary, armed hold-ups etc), loss of power or internet supply, machinery or vehicle failure and any other possible threats that could be present in your operations.
Develop a business continuity plan
When it comes to threats that impact your business operations, you will need a plan to get those operations running again as quickly as possible.
A typical business continuity plan operates on these four pillars:
- Prevention: To identify and mitigate the risks of known threats to try and prevent incidents from occurring as much as possible.
- Preparedness: Once the threats have been identified, this step outlines how these threats will impact your business operations.
- Response: The immediate actions required to contain, control and minimise the impacts of the incident.
- Recovery: Actions taken to minimise downtime and disruptions to your business operations.
Once this business continuity plan has been put together, it is important to rehearse it at every opportunity and review it annually at a bare minimum.
Establish a journey management plan
Disaster management is often focused on processes, people and threats that directly impact a business’s operations at its headquartered location and other brick and mortar premises.
But what about when workers are required to travel between job sites as part of their job?
This impacts many industries including the mining and resources sector where drivers need to travel large distances in remote and rural areas – often in areas where mobile reception can be limited.
Many factors need to be included in your disaster management plan to mitigate the risks of drivers travelling between job sites – incidents that account for over 40 per cent of all compensated workplace fatalities in Australia.
Journey Management System helps organisations automate this process through a mobile application that uses both the phone’s signal and GPS.
This ensures that drivers meet fatigue management requirements and reach checkpoints as scheduled, sending SMS, email and mobile alerts to managers if they do not.
Journey Management System is an essential part of any disaster management plan where drivers travel between job sites and allows for rapid deployment of emergency support – which can save lives.
