Your baby

One of my colleagues had a new baby recently. He’s bought the books and read the recommendations. Car seats, stair gates, bath thermometers and corner guards have all been dutifully ordered and installed. Smoke alarm batteries have been replaced, the baby monitor is installed and immunisations are all booked!

It got me thinking… when it comes to keeping a new baby safe, no time or expense is spared, but do business owners analyse the potential risks to their company in the same way new parents assess the sharp corners in their home? The answer, as a general rule, no.

Business continuity planning

‘Business continuity planning’ is the term employed by the industry, and many big companies are very good at it. But the majority of small and medium businesses are disengaged from this essential business process. In a time-poor culture, it is yet another task added to the ‘to do’ list, and left for another day.

Sadly, for some, ‘another day’ does not arrive, and after a major incident, many businesses never recover; losing orders, contracts, customers and key employees. Many sources cite an 80% failure rate in smaller businesses who have experienced a major incident, and those failures have wide ranging effects beyond the business initially affected.

Herd immunity

Going back to my colleague and his new baby, I mentioned childhood immunisations. There are a number of arguments for having your baby immunised. One of the most compelling is the concept of ‘herd immunity’ which says that when a critical portion of the population is vaccinated against a contagious disease, it is unlikely that an outbreak will occur. Therefore, those who are most vulnerable but who cannot be vaccinated due to age or ill-health, are protected by the ‘herd’.

The same is true of business risks. Whilst they are not, in themselves vaccine-preventable, by ensuring that the majority of businesses are protected through robust risk management, as a society we will be stronger overall and invariably better able to protect those who are not so well equipped.

Risk management

In a previous blog post, I spoke of three things that we need to do to as a business community to move toward a place of herd resilience. One of those was simplifying risk management, and we have developed TrackMyRisks to do just that. We recognise that management teams are busy and do not want to become business continuity experts so our solution is easy to use and allows companies of any size to identify, review and manage their essential risk and compliance documents in order to better protect their business.

And the best bit – unlike having a new baby it’s free! Try it here today.