I talk to a lot of business owners of all types. You’d be amazed at all business owners housed in office buildings that take lightly any calamity that might displace their operations. They don’t think it will happen to them. Here’s a real life case study that happened to one of my clients just last week…
Here is my client’s account…
“The building was being reroofed. Roofers goofed and left a hole above the shaft which houses mechanical rooms on each of the 5 floors. After a big rain Tuesday night, all electric and phone panels serving the building and tenants were fried. The building is uninhabitable until replacement of electric and phone panels, plus there is other water damage near the shaft, such as our conference room, and we won’t know status of HVAC until we have power to the building. All tenants are out. We have moved our computer system off-site and everyone is working remotely. Estimated time for re-occupancy might be 12-14 days. What a mess. My home is now my office. This has been a great character building experience.”
What’s your plan for 25 employees if something like this happened to you? You might not be the building owner, but all of a sudden, your entire operation is out on the street. Here are a few things most people don’t think about:
- Answering service issues
- Files and documents left behind that are unable to retrieve
- Access to critical records
- Accessibility to clients
- Lost time dealing with the issue (this might just be the most damaging as you can’t replace it)
Crisis happens daily in business and most of it doesn’t hit the local media, much less CNN. Can you answer the question I posed earlier…
What do you do with _____ employees if your building is uninhabitable?
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