Is your company prepared?
Local businesses and the voluntary sector in Warwickshire are being urged to prepare for disaster this week, as a new website is launched.
To mark Business Continuity Awareness Week 2006, Warwickshire County Councils Emergency Planning Unit in partnership with other local authorities including North Warwickshire Borough Council, Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council, Rugby Borough Council, Warwick District Council, and Stratford District Council are this week 13-19 March, launching a series of pages on its website which explain what business continuity is all about, why it’s important and also offer a range of resources to get businesses started. People can access the web pages at http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/bcm
Disasters can strike at any time. Each year one in five organisations suffer a major disruption from incidents such a fires, floods, power failure, product recall or even terrorism. Of those affected 80 percent never re-open or close down within 18 months. This can be dramatically reduced through having effective business continuity plans in place. The national picture shows that less than 50 percent of businesses are thought to have adequate continuity plans, particularly small and medium sized companies.
Over the coming weeks the unit will also be running a number of free breakfast seminars, where companies in Warwickshire have the opportunity to hear from industry experts and learn how they can prepare to respond and survive the impacts of disasters and business interruptions. Details on these events are also available from the website. In addition a leaflet introducing business continuity and further advice has been produced. This will be targeted at businesses and the voluntary sector in Warwickshire and will be distributed over the next few weeks.
Jeremy Lee, Manager of the Emergency Planning Unit says:
“Advising businesses and the voluntary sector about the importance of developing comprehensive business continuity plans, is not only critical to them individually but is also critical to the entire community as they are part of the infrastructure of any society.”