With the Beast from the East and Storm Emma causing Red and Amber weather warnings across the UK this week, it’s a good opportunity to consider what other challenges could hit your business, and plan for the worst!

Transcript:

Hi, and welcome to another episode of BaranovTV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

Please excuse my attire this morning. I’ve actually just been for my morning run. We’ve been quite lucky here and we’ve not got too much snow, but the rest of the U.K. has been battered by the ‘Beast from the East’ and Storm Emma. And there’s been the first ever red weather warning issued for Scotland where they’re really suffering, I think.

The thrust of the episode today is really about the snow or prompted by the snow and the number of people that you’re seeing online and on social media, etc saying, oh, snow day, can’t get in, business is going be affected, etc.

And whilst majority of the population probably has given some thought to snow today or the last few days, I wondered whether any of you actually have a business continuity plan where you sit down and work out all of the possible disasters, all of the possible disasters that could befall your business and what you would do if they did happen.

So we’re talking about sustained power cuts, so more than sort of 30 minutes. What would you do?

What would you do if you couldn’t physically get in to your business? So how would you get in touch with customers that perhaps would be due to come and see you? What would you do if there was a flood? What would you do if there was a break in?

You need to have these sorts of plans in place, not only for your insurance, but also in terms of your team and your customers, because the last thing you want to do is disappoint your customers and have them go somewhere else.

So it’s a very cheery message today!

It’s one that we’ve actually had to think about when we got caught out back years ago now. We found that we couldn’t get into our building because the police had cordoned it off. It was a crime scene! Not the building itself, but the area out the front of it, and at that point, though, we had a rear entrance, nobody else had keys. It was only myself and Chris that had the keys. Obviously that day we made sure everyone had them!

So have a think today if you do have some ‘snow time’ about what you could do to make sure that your business can continue.

I’m off to go and find a hot shower and a hot drink, having just been for my run, and I’ll see you all very soon.