We recently launched our new Workplace Recovery London brand, which now provides invaluable peace of mind to businesses in and around London from our on-site disaster recovery suite.

As part of the recent launch, we are helping SMEs to better understand the benefits of having such a service in place.

73% of small businesses admit to lacking a business continuity plan. And yet SMEs may struggle to recover if they’re hit with a disaster. Some never reopen at all.

This serves to highlight the importance small businesses should place in their own recovery plan.

Still not convinced? Below, we’ll take a look at the benefits of workplace recovery for a small business.

 

Prevent Lost Sales

The moment a crisis strikes your business, you begin to experience lost sales.

These losses only compound the longer the crisis continues. Lost sales become lost customers. Missed SLAs become financial penalties or lost contracts. After an extended outage, there’s a good chance you’ll need to pay extra to win back your customer base, too.

It’s rare that small businesses can take sustained losses like these. They often lack the financial safety nets of larger operations. A few weeks of lost revenue could ensure a small business will never recover.

Workplace recovery restores your services at the first possible opportunity. That way, you can begin making up for your lost revenue immediately. A good business continuity plan is one of the few things that will carry your business through a major disaster.

 

Customer Continuity

A workplace recovery plan can measure its success by whether your customers notice any disruption.

With the right recovery service in place, you can transition into backup services without your customers even spotting the difference. As we mentioned before, customers are more likely to abandon a service when there’s a break in continuity.

Investing in workplace recovery increases your chances of retaining your customers by preventing a hit to the customer experience.

This is especially vital for any businesses offering ongoing support. If your services go down, your customers could end up losing money themselves. In a worst-case scenario, your service outage could even pose a risk to customer well-being.

 

Staff Continuity

You also have your workforce to think about when you’re hit by a disaster.

If your staff are on flexible contracts, they’ll be unable to earn a living while you’re out of business. If you’re out for long enough, they’ll need to move on to other employment to cover their living costs.

But you need to consider permanent staff, too. Each day your company is out of action is another day you’re paying wages and benefits without RoI to your company. That’s yet another financial hit on top of the others we’ve covered.

Workplace recovery services can bring your premises back online to ensure continuity for staff. Where that’s not practical, they can help establish temporary operations centres.

Notifying your staff of an incident becomes much easier when vital services are in place. If you can bring your business back online even in a limited way, you can prepare your workforce for any disruption to their schedule.

 

Respond Efficiently

Humans in an emergency situation have a tendency to make poor decisions.

It’s not a universal trait, though. Most notably, those who know there’s a plan to follow can perform much better in a crisis situation. That’s why it’s so important to have a process in place for a major service outage.

A strong workplace recovery service fields a team of experts who know how to respond to disaster situations. They’ll follow a pre-planned set of actions to ensure your business continuity.

A business faces the prospect of huge financial losses when there’s a break in business continuity. They can’t afford to waste time figuring out what to do next. Fast, decisive action is the only way to limit the damage.

A recovery service will also work with you to come up with a preemptive plan. That way, you can rest assured that a plan is in place no matter what happens.

 

Maintain Your Brand

The general public understands that one-off incidents are largely unavoidable. But a prolonged issue suggest a deeper cause.

If you lack a recovery plan when an incident hits, you send a clear message. The message says you’re an amateur brand. It’s not nice, but it’s a fact. And these days, that’s likely to see you mocked on social media.

The hit to your reputation is yet another way you stand to suffer massive financial losses without a recovery plan. As your customers spread the word, they’ll drive away new custom.

Unless you have a masterful PR team, negative media coverage will only destroy the reputation you’ve built for your brand.

But with a good recovery plan, you’ll actually get to show off your competence. It’ll impress your customers if you pull off providing your service even in the event of a disaster – it might be the only British instinct stronger than the urge to banter.

 

Peace of Mind

Running a small business already demands a lot of hat-wearing. Without the luxury of dedicated teams, employees at a smaller company often have no choice but to juggle multiple tasks.

The last thing you want to add to the daily concerns of running a business is the fear that it could all end at a moment’s notice. Yet a single fire or flood could wipe out everything you’ve built.

Hiring a workplace recovery service puts your business continuity in the hands of experts.

That frees you up to spend mental energy on your business instead. It also makes each investment in your business less of a gamble, as you’re less likely to lose everything overnight.

Small-business owners often undervalue peace of mind. Yet peace of mind is what stops work overtaking your life. With a business continuity plan in place, you’re free to focus on your core business without distraction.

 

Workplace Recovery is Serious Business

Running a small business doesn’t mean you have to think like one. You’re vulnerable to many of the same factors that can hit a larger business. Yet your position can rarely take the hit in the same way. Consider workplace recovery services if you plan to take your business seriously.

Looking for more disaster recovery information? Be sure to get in touch with our team.