Although setbacks are considered a normal part of doing business, if an organization is ill-prepared for a disaster, it can result in loss of life and/or the end of an enterprise. Disasters in the past five years alone—the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Hurricanes Katrina and Ivan, and the SARS epidemic, to name a few—have strongly demonstrated the need for organizations to prepare for calamitous events.
The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ survey, Disaster Planning, found 52% of organizations have a disaster plan and 27% are planning to have a plan within 12 months.
This survey reflects responses from 261 U.S. and Canadian multiemployer trust funds, corporations, public employers and professional service firms (attorneys, consultants, third-party administrators, etc.). It offers 16 hard-to-find sample disaster plans and checklists. Survey responses were also obtained at a live conference session on disaster planning held at the Benefits Conference for Public Employees in March in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
Other findings, by category, include:
- Prevalence of Disaster Plans: Two-thirds of those with disaster plans either created or revised their plan because of recent disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the SARS epidemic and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Nearly a quarter of respondents either created or revised their disaster plan because of avian flu concerns.
- Types of Disasters Addressed in Disaster Plans: Fire (88%), utility failures (76%), computer failures (75%) and floods (69%) are the types of disasters most often addressed in disaster plans. Other types of disasters frequently addressed are tornadoes or hurricanes (61%) and terrorist and/or bomb threats or attacks (61%).
- Business Continuation Provisions: According to our respondents, the most common provisions in a disaster
plan include:
- Off-site storage of backup records (82%)
- Selection of an alternate worksite in advance (73%)
- How to evacuate employees and visitors (69%).
- Employee Assistance Provisions: The most common provisions in a disaster plan to aid employees are access to counseling or an employee assistance program (51%) and emergency payroll distribution or cash advances (47%).
- Communication and Testing: Although 34% of our respondents have both communicated their disaster plan to employees and implemented an exercise or drill to test the plan, 26% of respondents have neither communicated nor tested the plan.
[order full report]