Disasters can happen to any organization and they come in many forms and severities. They can be everything from a natural disaster, to a well-meaning employee accidently downloading a dangerous virus, to something essential getting mistakenly deleted. These what-ifs can keep you up at night, so for your own reassurance develop a disaster recovery plan.

Decide What’s Important

The first step is to determine what data is vital to your business. What data needs to be recovered quickly for your company to run? This will tell you what you need to back up.

Make a Plan

Your next step is to consider what steps you should take if something happens. Begin with the worst possible scenario and make a plan for that. What technology do you need if everything is destroyed, what data, and what systems have to be back up ASAP? Write down these in order of importance.

Know Your Workflows

I’m sure you have the big picture of your company processes, but how about all the day-to-day processes that you don’t have memorized? Ask your staff to document their workflows and the specific tasks they preform. By doing this, if something does happen, anyone can pick up where they left off and nothing gets looked over.

Decide Who is in Charge

Depending on the type of disaster you experience, your employees could panic.  Before this happens, select one levelheaded person in the company to be “in charge” of the disaster recovery plan. They ought to know the plan as well as you do and possibly have helped you develop it. This is the individual you turn to for execution of the plan, so that you can be the strong leader your employees need at a time like this.

Disaster can happen to anyone! So before it does, develop a good plan so that you know what to do. It will make both your employees and you feel more secure.