Tips For Protecting Your Business From Disaster During Hurricane Season

As the summer season begins, so too does hurricane season. Unfortunately, the first hurricane season catches many new business owners unprepared. How quickly you can get things back in operation will depend upon how well prepared you are before the storm season comes in. Here are a few tips to help you with your first storm season as a small business owner.

Put A Response Plan In Place

One of the biggest problems encountered by most small businesses is the lack of a plan to respond to potential disasters. Without that plan in place, your employees won't have a clear understanding of where to go or how to handle an emergency situation. Work with a safety specialist to create a detailed evacuation plan, then have the evacuation routes printed on signs that can be hung throughout the office.

Create An Emergency Kit

Even with an evacuation plan in place, that may not be enough to get everybody out of harm's way before the storm hits. If you find yourself facing a storm, you need to have an emergency kit for the building so that you have enough supplies to sustain the staff for as long as possible. Make sure you have several dozen gallon jugs of water as well as lots of non-perishable foods, garbage bags, plastic sheeting, emergency radios and flashlights. Add a few waterproof cameras so you can get pictures of the damage as well. This will be beneficial for insurance.

Protect Your Server Data

Since there's no way to know when disaster could strike, it's in your best interest to have daily server backups completed and stored on a backup server that's located off site. Cloud backup storage is great for this, because you can access your backed up data from anywhere. You'll need to be able to get to that information to get things up and running again. In addition, if you have a backup, it reduces the losses you'll have to claim on your insurance policy. You'll still likely have to claim hardware loss for any servers that were physically damaged, but you won't have data loss to contend with.

Assess Your Insurance Policies

You probably understand the importance of insurance for protecting your business, but you may not realize that the insurance might not help if you haven't purchased enough coverage to address significant losses like natural disasters.

Take time to assess your coverage a couple of times a year. As your business grows and your investments increase, you'll need to adjust your policies accordingly. Think about the costs you would incur if you happened to experience a significant disaster. Work with a business insurance specialist to make sure that you have all of the protections that you need based on the value of your company's building and assets.

Don't let the "it won't happen to me" type of perspective keep you from protecting your business investment. With these tips, you'll be prepared to address any potential losses from an impending disaster such as a severe hurricane. Contact a business, such as the Austin Insurance Agency, for more information.