June CWiB Meeting Highlights

JUNE HIGHLIGHTS

The networking breakfast guest speaker was Angie Fay, Blessey Marine Services Vice President of HSE and Compliance. She spoke about emergency preparedness for your business. There is more to preparing your business for the unexpected than purchasing batteries and bottled water. An emergency could be a storm, hurricane, power outage, fire, theft, flood, or anything that causes an interruption to your business. She emphasized the importance of having a plan in place, but focusing on three key areas: people, communications, and assets.

Make sure you know who your key people are – employees, vendors, suppliers, customers – and what they need to function or help your business function. Keep updated contact information somewhere accessible, like the Cloud. Think about how you’re going to communicate if phone lines are busy or the Internet is down: you have to reach your employees as well as your customers. Determine what and who you must have to run your business: equipment, supplies, key positions, and prepare a plan for how to run your business during an emergency and where you’ll do it from if you have to temporarily relocate.

It is also important to keep multiple backups of important computer files or documents: diversify the location and have more than one in case of computer or equipment failure, fire, theft, etc.

The breakfast sponsor was Millermark Creations. Thank you!