How to prepare an emergency management plan

Assess the risks to your business, ways to minimise risk and contingencies. Risks can include drought, storms, floods, fires, pandemic, terrorism, theft, data attacks, and even high staff turnover.

Visit Risk management for more information on assessing and mitigating risk.

Identify and list the critical areas of your business. Record ways you can minimise failures in these areas.

Complete a more detailed scenario based on each of your top 3 ranking critical business areas. Developing scenarios can help you work out what to do when these critical areas fail and what resources you'll need to recover.

In your emergency management plan, record the insurance policies you currently hold to cover your business risks.

Visit Insurance for more information.

Record what you have done to make your property infrastructure less vulnerable to damage.

Is your property secured with alarms, security personnel or video surveillance from unlawful entry? Do you have fire retardant or flood resistant building materials? Are leaf litter, grass and gutters maintained regularly to minimise fire risk?

Identify temporary office accommodation you can quickly access in an emergency situation. Consider attaching a map of your accommodation options to the back of your plan.

Record what other strategies you’ll consider to help maintain business as usual. Think about a virtual office service, an e-commerce website or an online auction or e-marketplace shopfront.

Visit Buying and selling online for more information.

List your current staff in the table provided and any cross-training requirements. Outline each job title, the name of the employee in the position, the expected staff turnover for the position and each employee's relevant skills or strengths. You may also like to attach a copy of their resume to the back of your plan.

Visit Training for more information.

Explain how you:

• will document how you maintain staff skills
• make sure responsibilities are allocated appropriately
• document staff responsibilities
• communicate responsibilities to staff
• will regularly check that current staff skills are still appropriate for the business

Visit setting up a corporate governance structure for more information.

Record how you protect your data and your network. Detail your backup procedures in the table provided.

List your local emergency services numbers and any additional contacts you will need to phone in an emergency. These should include the local state emergency, police, fire and ambulance services.

Briefly outline your emergency evacuation procedures. It may be useful to attach a copy of your detailed emergency procedures and floor plan with the location of emergency exits, emergency kit and safety equipment clearly marked. Your emergency procedures should also include a map of evacuation locations for all emergencies.

Use the table provided in the plan to schedule your emergency evacuation drills.

Record where your emergency kit is located or stored. Make sure:

• your staff know where it is
• that it is clearly visible and labelled

List the contents of your emergency kit in the table provided and the date each item was last checked/reviewed.

Communication is essential when making emergency planning procedures. Consider allocating a person/people to be responsible for any emergency situation. Set clear roles and responsibilities and provide appropriate training.

Based on your assessment of the damage to your business. Complete the table provided in your plan (in order of severity) or attach your own impact assessment to the back of your plan.

Include all of the organisations or people that will be essential to the recovery of your business. See also the emergency contacts in your action plan above.

List any insurance policies you have claimed for. Use the table provided to record any discussions you have with an insurer about your claim.

Based on your assessment of the damage to your business and/or surrounding area, list any areas of your market that have changed in the table provided. Alternatively, attach a complete market assessment to the back of your plan.

Detail your marketing strategy after the emergency. If your business is reopening its doors after a disaster, how will you get the message out? What channels will you use to target customers? How does this strategy differ in light of any changes in the market? For example, you may consider a targeted marketing effort (such as a social media campaign) to communicate your business re-opening.

See Marketing to help you get started.