Is your business ready to reopen?

More importantly, is your business ready for the next “catastrophic” shutdown?

The current economic climate for most businesses in America highlights the lack of preparedness for COVID-19 crisis. According to a study from the Harvard Business Review, 45% of small businesses were temporarily closed under stay-at-home orders. Of those businesses, FEMA estimates that approximately 40% of them will be forced to close following this crisis, with another 25% of them failing within a year of reopening. Even for businesses that have adapted and can still operate normally, changes in consumer behavior, supply lines and production have demanded massive changes in order to recoup losses, including the loss of 40% of the workforce for small businesses.

We have learned painful lessons as organizations around the world were surprised by the speed at which COVD-19 spread and shut down entire economies around the globe. Chief among these lessons is the importance of preparation. Insurance company Nationwide found in their survey of small businesses prior to the crisis that 68% of small-business owners don’t have any written form of a plan for disaster recovery.

Although as an organization there is only so much we can do to mitigate the financial impact, there is a lot that we could do to quickly respond to such calls-to-action and minimize the exposure to our employees, our suppliers, our customers and our society as a whole. We can’t look backward and fix anything that has happened, but we can look forward and anticipate what might happen. This is why every company must, by now, have an Emergency Preparedness plan to deal with such events.

A robust EP plan must have certain elements included in its program. There are templates available for businesses that don’t know where to start in developing such a plan. The US Small Business Administration has a website that provides a wealth of resources to help you get started with developing plans around hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and more. For pandemic preparedness, however, things get a bit more complicated, and having a program tailored to your needs and organization represents its own set of challenges. Taking generic plans can create more rework and undershoot or overshoot your plans.

Through our Internal Research

We’ve developed an Emergency Preparedness Plan that incorporates all the elements that are required to have in place so that your organization is prepared for the future pandemics and lockdowns. Here are some of the key components that we noted as essential to any EP program, keeping in mind that these have to be assessed against your organization in order to have an EP program that is fully actionable and truly support the organization when it needs it the most.

These factors may require some level of initial investment. However, we live in a different world as a result of COVID-19, and those businesses that can prepare for the times ahead will be the ones to prosper, no matter how many re-openings they go through.

Key Components Essential to any EP Program

  • Pandemic Response Team
  • Preventative Material Inventory
  • Personal Protective Equipment
  • Disinfection Measures
  • Deep-Cleaning and Disinfection Protocol
  • Inbound Parts/Materials/Packages
  • Layered Audit Checklist
  • Transportation
  • Isolation Protocol & Coordinator Training
  • Social Distancing Protocol
  • On-site Health Screening
  • Daily Self-Screening Protocol
  • Self-Quarantining and Return to Work Protocol
  • Visitors & Contractors Self-Screening