“What on earth is a ‘what if?’ policy? Surely, I mean contingency planning, right!? No, I mean ‘what if?’
What if your business website fails or falls over? What if your car breaks down? What if (if you are a parent) a child is taken ill & you are the primary carer? What if you are injured? What if the roof falls in on your workshop? Or what if your mother is taken into hospital with a suspected stroke & you live nearly three hours away? (yes, this one is me)
Continuity & contingency planning is an organic part of larger business policies. These essential policies help protect businesses from the inside out & allows continuity in the face of adversity.
However, what happens if you are a small business owner or sole trader & something unexpected happens to stop you going to work? Are you protected? Do you have a continuity policy or a ‘what if?’ plan?
Being self employed & or a business owner allows a natural element of flexibility to a working week. If you need to take time for an appointment, or a holiday or a business trip; being self employed means you can adjust the work diary to suit.
However, as we all know, every moment a self-employed person or small business owner is away from their business & not actually working, they are not generating an income & no one pays the self-employed when they are not at work.
Having a robust contingency/continuity plan in place can alleviate the pressure should an unforeseen situation arise. Some small business owners who have a small staff, can rely on them to a certain extent if they are called away unexpectedly.
This however obviously comes with it’s own issues, as simple things like access codes, keys, account details, etc, etc would need to be shared with another individual to enable – in the case of a business premises for example – to remain open. This of course only works if there is a mutual trust & or if the employee given this sudden additional responsibility is accepting of a change in situation.
So, we accept that if there is another member of staff & or maybe a business partner, contingency & continuity planning is easier, as long as it is written into policy & all involved are made aware of the needs of the policy.
But, what if it’s just you? If you are a sole trader & you literally have no one to call upon or what you do for a living is a specific skill set which cannot be simply picked up by someone else? The ‘what if?’ in this case is more challenging to fathom & to ride out, especially if you are a sole trader.
These questions are more relevant than ever for me this week, after my mother was taken into hospital on Sunday with a suspected stroke. I live nearly three hours away from my parents & although my sister lives nearby it was still necessary for me to go & visit my mother & offer whatever support I could, especially as my father is currently recovering from knee surgery.
But what did this mean for my work & for the business I run with my partner? Having left work Monday afternoon to travel to where my parents live, this left my partner in charge of the business unexpectedly & although we are only two people running the business, my sudden unexpected absence does have an impact; especially as I am the back office support to my motorcycle technician partner.
This sudden drop everything & go really made me thing about the whole ‘what if?’ scenario & with guidance from a business analyst friend, I am now going to be spending some time assessing the elements of the business I run with my partner & start to bring together practical & productive protection for us should another ‘what if?’ situation arise.
Obviously, as a sole trader/business owner you cannot plan for every single eventuality, but there are a lot of areas which can be addressed easily & effectively.
Simple things like accessing work phones & emails & adding an ‘out of office’ message to let customers/clients know you are unavailable but will come back to them. If you have a business premises & have trusted business neighbours, perhaps contacting them to ask for deliveries to be taken in & or if any customers/clients do arrive unexpectedly; to let them know that you will come back to them.
Other areas of the business to consider the ‘what if?’ scenario is the company website, email & other communication devices. If the business website fell over for example, who is the right person to contact & do they have relevant access? If the phones fail, do you have the account numbers written down somewhere? & what happens if there is a power cut at your business address? Can you go home to work? Do you have a back-up generator?
Throughout the Covid19 pandemic many business owners learnt the very hard way about contingency/continuity planning as no one saw THAT ‘what if?’ coming. Lessons have been learnt. But often it is the personal side of life which throws the most unexpected curve balls which can & do upset the flow of businesses & or the work of the self-employed.
Time to get planning & watch out for the ‘what if?’ scenario, it can get you when you least expect it!”
Written by Katy-Jane Mason for & on behalf of Virtually Smart Ltd
