Business Owners Need to Be Ready for Hurricane Season
For individuals who own businesses, the start of a new hurricane season (June 1-Nov. 30) should be on their radar.
Years of hard work can be lost in just a short time should a hurricane impact a business during its destructive path through a town. Is your business prepared to handle this threat?
According to experts, 2010 will be an extremely active season, with as many as 23 named storms and 3 to 7 reaching major hurricane force in the Atlantic Basin. As hurricanes become an increasing threat, education and early preparation are an extremely high priority for business owners.
Businesses need to come to terms with the fact that they will be met with the challenge of dealing with complex property and business interruption insurance claims.
On the bright side, there are actions businesses can take now to better prepare for hurricane season.
Among the things business should do are:
- Disaster Preparedness – Businesses should create and/or update disaster recovery plans; Assess if accounting systems can properly receive information to quantify and document losses (lost orders, cancellations, drop in demand, property repair);
- Create and/or update disaster recovery plans – Business owners should think about changes in locations, operations, logistics, employees and other major impacts for the company’s risk profile;
- Assess if employees have properly been trained to reclaim relevant loss data along with documentation;
- Go over your insurance policies for the appropriate value and coverage. Be sure to cover things such as deductibles and self-retentions. You should also look at things such as flood, extended period of indemnity, ordinary payroll, contingent business interruption and more;
- Be sure to back up your records and other pertinent office information ahead of a hurricane. It is best to store this information in another location that is safe and will be available to you immediately.
Business owners should also be ready to do the following:
- Determine how much money they might require in reserve in the event they had to shut down for a day, a week, or longer;
- Maintain an emergency contact list to include all of your employees along with local emergency responders and utilities;
- Have a relocation plan in place and develop contacts ahead of time with real estate agents so you are prepared to relocate if necessary. Scout a potential temporary location to make sure the infrastructure can support the business and provide the needed materials, storage space and so on.
While hurricane season can prove quite devastating, those business owners who come prepared stand a better chance of getting through this time.