Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Whenever starting any business/enterprise, it’s important to be proactive about anything that can go wrong and proactively come up with contingency plans. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Business Unusual.
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Business, as usual, might sound boring, but there are times when you might long for it. When things go right, you never really consider what might go wrong. But as the saying goes, you should fix your roof when the sun is out. Here are some business calamities you might not want to think about, but you should, before they happen.
Employees being swept by a sickness bug. It’s not something you want to think of, but what if an epidemic erupts that wipes out whole teams? Sure, you can deal with one or two, but what if the fall back of the fall back falls ill? They key here is prevention. Make sure your employees have facilities to wash hands when needed and promote hygiene where relevant. People get sick when they are weaker, also more so during colder months. Ensure that employees who are coming back from illness are indeed fit for work. If you have the capacity, perhaps a final day working from home will ensure they don’t bring back any disease to the office.
Someone on your premises getting hurt. This falls under the category of the unthinkable. But what if this happens despite diligently making sure signs are put up when the floor has been mopped, and the appropriate signs are put up? The key here is to get legal representation, for example, Simon Law Group can be a lifesaver navigating the tricky waters of injury law. And it’s not the case you can wait till things actually happen, time can be of the essence. So make you are prepared and know exactly who to call when as soon as things happen.
Cash flow is not sufficient to pay ongoing bills. The worst nightmare of any financial controller or accountant. What if your invoices aren’t getting paid fast enough, which affects your ability to pay your own bills? The key here is to audit often and early. You should continuously monitor the debtors lists, flag and take action when needed. Review your terms of payment when required and in extreme cases negotiate payment plans when invoices can’t be paid in full. It might just be that debtors struggle with the entire sum, but a payment agreement is just precisely what they need. The same goes for suppliers required payment, negotiate. Having a full payment, in the long run, outweighs a business going bust and not getting paid at all.
Imagine your key employees who have a fundamental knowledge of operations leave. The significant brain drain could be one of the most negatively impactful things to happen to a business, especially operating in a service driven industry. You might not only lose essential operational knowledge, but people might move over to a competitor! The core thing here is to ensure you have NDAs and non-compete’s set up from the get-go. Ensure you know what the value and processes are these key employees bring and ensure that this knowledge is codified in some form. Sure, no one likes creating handover notes or complete process sheets, but investing this time will safeguard your business long term. There is also a secondary benefit, really understanding and valuing the input of critical employees might bring you closer to them, and you might uncover any doubts their end that made them consider jumping ship in the first place. You might not be able to stop people from leaving, but at least you can part on good terms.
A major incident at your office forces you to shut down for the day. You might hear of these incidents from time to time. Someone smelled gas, or there is no water. Health and Safety usually dictate you need to shut the office until this is resolved. Do you actually know what to do in these type is situations? Get an emergency plan in place. Know what to do with emails, phones, ongoing work and suppliers that will assume business as usual. Do you have a core team that can relocate to a temporary office space nearby and can you reroute and supplies or clients coming in? Do you have a phone tree ready to inform employees? As you would practice fire drills, so should these type of incidents be trained for. Ensure that a core set of employees knows what to do in which situation.
Most of these calamities require some scenario planning and establishing rules and procedures. It’s a time and resource investment you will have to make upfront and keep up-to-date with regular reviews. Just do it, you’ll be thankful just in case business as usual turns into business unusual.
