Disaster resilience for business

Did you know that most disaster preparation is the same regardless of what the situation is? It might seem hard but preparing your business for disaster is easier than you think.

A disaster recovery plan will enable you to adapt more quickly to change so you can minimise the risk of disruption to your business. Make sure to share your plan with your staff so they know what to do.

When thinking about how to help your business survive future disasters, ask yourself:

What would make my business ready to adapt?
How can I prepare before a disaster?
How do I keep trading during a disaster?
What do I need to get my business back up and running?

The more you know about what could disrupt your business, the more you can do to prevent it.

Use the checklist for business response and continuity to help you when disasters strike.

Complete the toolkit to help your business be more resilient to future disasters.

Watch our video about 5 steps you can take to prepare your business for disruption and build business resilience.

What is business resilience, preparedness, response and recovery?

There are 4 areas to consider when looking at helping your business survive disasters:

business resilience
business preparedness and prevention
business response and continuity
business resumption and recovery.

Diagram for business resilience

What is business resilience?

A resilient business can adapt to disruptions and keep operating while looking after its people, assets and brand equity.

Business resilience is a whole-of-business approach. It helps owners and managers respond to disasters, shocks and disruptions. The key to business resilience is knowing which processes, critical needs and workflows you need to keep trading.

The more you and your staff know about what your business needs to keep operating, the more resilient your business will be.

What is business preparedness and prevention?

Preparing your business is the step before a disaster but it’s often forgotten.

Being prepared means knowing the risks your business faces. You’ll be more aware of how a potential disaster might affect your operations. And you can work out which risks you can prevent.

It’s important to make time every week or month to plan and prepare your business for potential hazards.

What is business response and continuity?

Once a disaster occurs, your business must put the safety of people first. You also need to protect business assets as you react to the changes around you.

Business continuity allows you to keep doing business until things return to normal. Your response team will action your emergency and evacuation plan while you focus on trading safely.

This section will help you to strengthen your ability to respond to disasters like bushfires, floods, cyber-attacks and pandemics.

So, what are the relevant high-level issues during a disaster?

evacuation and emergency contacts
people, assets, resources and operations
business information, data and systems IT
products, goods and services
finances and financial management
logistics, supply chains and insurance
commercial arrangements
professional support and networks
partnerships, customers and communications
grants and government funding.

What is business resumption and recovery?

After a disaster, you'll want to restore your business to how it was before the interruption. While business response and continuity is how you respond during the disaster, resuming your business begins once the situation has ended.

With a fast and cost-effective plan to support essential operations, you can keep serving your customers and clients.

Business recovery focuses on recovering all business processes, including employees, workspaces, equipment and facilities.

If you’ve prepared well, your business will recover from a disaster more efficiently in the short, medium and long term. Your reward will be high customer and client retention when you need it most.

Checklist for business response

This quick reference checklist will help you protect your people and assets as you respond to a disaster. It will also help you to continue operating until you return to normal business operations.

Leading your business during disasters checklist | fillable version (PDF 164.03 KB)