For decades we have helped growth-oriented agency owners develop and implement plans that guarantee the continued growth, productivity and profitability of their businesses. Integrated into those Strategic Plans have been Succession/Perpetuation Planning and Disaster Recovery Plans. But, of course, Succession/Perpetuation Plans and Disaster Recovery Plans require and deserve evolution and development of their own as subsets of the overall Strategic Development Plans of the agency.
A Strategic Plan lays out the future development of the agency over a foreseeable period of time, usually five years. Looking out more than five years becomes “fuzzy” and problematic. Too many things can happen in the short term that affects the overall organization that far out. But if you have at least five or ten years of history, you can already project what will happen in one, three or even five years, whether you continue the same path you’ve tread historically – or plan to implement changes that are expected to influence the growth pattern of the agency in the short term. The longer your history, the more accurate your Strategic Plan especially if you plan few or no substantial changes in your operation. And, a long history allows you to estimate and project the effects of any single changes made to alter your results. YOUR PAST HISTORICAL TRENDS PORTENDS YOUR FUTURE UNLESS SPECIFIC CHANGES ARE MADE.
On the other hand, a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP), including a Crisis Plan for things like the Chinese Virus now circulating around the world, works as a short term plan in three sections: 1. What to do immediately, 2. What to do in the short term 30-90 days, and 3. What to do to get back to normal for you and for your clients beyond the medium term.
Historically, Crisis Plans have been created and implemented primarily in the event of a weather emergency
Right now, every agent should have or should be drafting a Crisis Plan for how to recover from whatever ramifications you have suffered as the result of the physical, emotional and economic “hit” caused by the Wuhan Virus in your area.
Steps in Crisis Planning:
- Evaluate Immediate Needs to satisfy clients and employees. Whether a physical crisis (fire, flood, wind, etc) or a health crisis (stay-in-place orders due to a medical crisis) specific logistics must be in place with an implementable document that can result in staff and management moving from the normal to a crisis mode that fits the cause of the crisis.
- Identify what we must have in place to continue to provide critical services tomorrow and over the next week.
- Create the management reporting mechanism to assure all critical items are accomplished during the next 30 days.
- Plan a transition to normality from the time the crisis has peaked until normality is logically achieved.
Committing a Disaster Recovery or Crisis Plan to paper is ESSENTIAL. The reason it is so important is that while everyone will consider the big things after a disaster, what will be missing and likely will severely harm you are the minor details that will be much easier to identify when listing all that needs to be done.
Start with the big things. Work your way down to the details of facilities, equipment, personnel, locations, etc.
Understand that you will likely NOT have all the resources at hand. That’s O.K. But now is the time to begin a structured acquisition program that will set aside Crisis Packs that will permit you to seamlessly flow from normal operations to Crisis Operations when the need arises. At the same time, you create your Plan for what you will need that you don’t already have you must also designate staff members to tasks that they will need to accomplish if the need arises for disaster recovery or crisis management. That, too, must be written and rehearsed sufficiently for the staff involved to be acquainted with their responsibilities in the event of imminent need. Then once each quarter review the plan with the staff members letting them touch and feel the Crisis Packs as you acquire them.
I know we are not first responders in a crisis as insurance agents. If you are a first responder, I give you all of my respect and well wishes. But once the need for extraordinary measures are past, the first thing that your clients will think about is recovering their insurable belongings and property. In order to show them the value of using an independent agent we must BE THERE when they need us. Even if our facilities were harmed, we must stand ready to help our clients and gain and reinforce the reputation that we have as the unheralded heroes who help put our clients back into normal operation after a crisis.
If you need help creating a Disaster Recovery Program, call us at 856 779 2430. We will come to you and set up a tailored program with and for your specific conditions and potential for disaster.