By Mike Walsh, Director of Communications/SunGard Availability Services.
With the recent hurricanes in Florida, the three-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks and one year after the Northeast Blackout of 2003, disaster planning needs to be
at the top of every senior communicator's "to-do" list. Unfortunately, many times disaster planning gets placed on the back burner because of the day-to-day issues that require
immediate attention.
Corporate America is apparently well behind the curve when it comes to planning for potential catastrophes. According to a recent Harris Poll, just 22% of Fortune 1000
companies indicated that they were completely prepared to face a natural or man-made disaster while 79% said that more than half of their employees are unaware of their companies'
policies and procedures concerning disaster planning. These numbers reflect a clear breakdown in effective crisis communications. Improvement of corporate communication during a
disaster is now more important than ever.
Here are steps to help your company plan for a disaster:
- Create a disaster plan and identify your company's core crisis management team. This team will be the first responders and therefore should contain elements of most, if
not all departments at the company, including senior management, human resources, operations, accounting and, of course, public relations and/or marketing. Be sure that all
members are assigned clear, definitive roles, responsibilities and actions during the disaster. - Create a wallet-sized contact list that contains home phone numbers, cell phone numbers, etc. of all members of the crisis management team. This basic form of organization
can prove invaluable when maneuvering through a crisis. - Review agreements with vendors to replace critical equipment and property in the event of a disaster. Make sure employees know about these off-site locations. In today's high-
tech business climate it is more important than ever to have access to business critical information - no matter what. Disaster recovery and business continuity companies provide
services range from providing workstations for displaced workers at a recovery center to hosting your company's servers and information systems at a hardened facility. Many
companies directly affected by disasters spent days, if not weeks, in these types of facilities. - Test the disaster plan. While you can't simulate reality, the more often you test the plan, the more acquainted the employees will be with their roles. The minute a company
enacts their disaster plan a senior PR executive needs to be equally prepared to react.