Holiday Breaks and Continuity Plans: How You Can Profit From Your Holiday Break

November 12th, 2011 by Admin

Many of the business people that I work with find extreme difficulty in taking time off because they obsess about their business and meeting their customers’ needs.

Since the health of a small business depends directly on the health of the owner, I encourage my clients to plan downtime into their working lives to avoid getting worn down by work.

Being practical, taking a summer break will only recharge your batteries if you plan to get the most from your holiday break:

Declare a holiday

Mark your holiday dates in the calendar and prepare just as you do for other work projects: list potential worries, prioritise tasks to complete before departure and plan tasks for your return.

Straighten your admin

Pay important bills to avoid returning to final demands. Send out invoices early to ensure cash flows whilst you are away. De-clutter your office so you make a clean start.

Get your calls forwarded to the voicemail on your mobile and incoming faxes to your email account then pack your laptop and modem for easy access.

Wind down into your holiday

If you employ staff, arrange their holidays in a roster: discuss who will be responsible for during your absence, and how they should deal with important issues so you don’t return to a mountain of post and messages.

Avoid important meetings in the weeks that you leave or return. At least three weeks beforehand, let your customers, suppliers and other key people know your absence dates so they can flex their plans.

Security matters

If your premises are unattended, don’t tell potential burglars: ask callers to leave a message on your voicemail. Secure your premises; store important documents elsewhere; and backup vital information and put the copies in two different locations.

Appoint someone trustworthy to check your answering machine and premises. Leave instructions on how you can be reached in case of an emergency.

Optimise your return

Work stress commonly spoils a good holiday and creates family tensions, so leave your business behind, consciously relax, get the most out of your break and recharge those batteries so that you return refreshed, invigorated and ready for business.

If you follow these simple steps, you will enjoy a well-deserved break from work, you will avoid worrying about the business and you will return ready to work profitably with your customers as they come back from their holidays.

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Business Recovery

November 12th, 2011 by Admin

If you stay in business long enough you will witness the good side and the bad side of business life. It is an unfortunate fact of life that things never run smoothly all of the time, in fact they have a way of turning bad when least expected.

One of the most difficult decisions a business owner can face, is deciding if their businesses worth recovering? To find the true answer to this question it is sometimes worth employing the opinion of an outside agency. This agency will carry out a complete audit and report their finding to you, the good thing about employing an outside agency is they are devoid of emotion towards the business and deal purely with facts and figures.

If the company is deemed recoverable a recovery package can be put in place, generally this comes in the form of a long term loan. Most recovery loans come with stipulations; the reason is to prevent the business failing in the future. Businesses the world over will come across difficult times, for various reasons, the one factor that separates successful businessmen from their peers is lessons are learned by their mistakes and errors of judgement.

Administrators are usually called in for large or PLC’s (Public Limited Company) that find themselves in financial trouble. This normally happens after financial support for the company is withdrawn. News that the Administrators have been called in usually result in the mass ‘sell off’ of company shares; this compounds the problems even more. The Administrators will carry out a complete audit and ascertain if there is anything left of value after all debts are paid. Generally speaking debts are not payable and the company is listed as bankrupt. However on the odd occasion the Administrators will see value in keeping the company afloat, a recovery package is put in place and things have been known to eventually turn around totally.

Posted in Disaster Recovery

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Disaster Planning For Small Business

November 6th, 2011 by Admin

No one knows just how many small businesses owners lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. No one knows how many will be able to come back from disaster. But the odds are that the ones who successfully rebuild there businesses will be the ones who had a disaster plan in place before the hurricane struck. A solid small business disaster plan has three components, protecting human resources, protecting physical resources and planning for business continuity.

If you’re a sole proprietor, your plans to protect your human resources probably dovetail easily with your plans to protect your home and family. However, if you have employees, you need a more detailed plan to estimate how long employees will be unable to get to work, what your policy will be for compensation while employees are out of work after a disaster, and how you will make payroll if computer systems and banks are inaccessible.

You will also need an immediate disaster response plan to cover what you and your employees will do in an emergency and during its aftermath to protect life and limb. This plan should include things like administering first aid, food and water storage, establishing a company-wide meeting place and proper safety precautions that you and your employees should take during and after a disaster.

Protecting your physical resources is more complicated depending on whether you own or lease the building that houses your business. If your building is leased you will need to work with your landlord to develop a solid property protection plan for the building. You and your employees will need to develop a separate plan to protect assets in the leased space such as furniture and computers. If you own your building, consulting with an architect or engineer about your building’s capabilities in a disaster can help you plan what measures need to be taken to protect it. Your local chamber of commerce or Small Business Administration can provide you with a property protection checklist to incorporate into your disaster plan.

Having employees present in an undamaged building after a disaster won’t do any good if you don’t have the critical records you need to run your business. A business continuity plan will ensure that you have procedures in place to protect your vital paper and electronic records. A business continuity plan also needs to address issues like interruption of deliveries from upstream suppliers and estimates of your company’s ability to deliver to your customers after a disaster.

Posted in Disaster Recovery

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