While it’s never been simple to build a successful business continuity or disaster recovery plan, recent shifts in how organizations manage employees and sites have only increased the complexity, according to an article in Insurance Business Magazine. While previously the massive majority of employees would work onsite, and reside locally, the recent changes to increased remote work has created situations where old assumptions are no longer valid. Says CEO of Global Guardian, Dale Buckner, “Employees are going to work from home for the foreseeable future. So, when it comes to planning for natural disasters and disruptive events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and wildfires, I think the number one difference is that you now must account for people that you think are in North Carolina, but could be in Australia, the Caribbean, basically thousands of miles away.” At the very least, organizations need to account for different manners of contacting remove workers after an emergency event.
Similarly, physical expansions also need to carefully consider the handling of disaster recovery, as each location may offer a different set of potential natural disaster than those to which the organization is accustomed to dealing with. Says Buckner, a company needs to consider, “Is this location in a flood or fire zone? Will there be enough water supply in the future? If you invest in a headquarters in Las Vegas, when the future of the Colorado River as that city’s main water source is horrific, it could pose a real problem. There’s going to have to be kinds of investment to pipe water in, which makes it more expensive. So, I would simply say, ‘add that as part of your criteria’.”
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