When you hear disaster, tornadoes, floods, or fires may come to mind, but disasters come in many forms. It could be a chemical spill, a blackout or a workplace violence situation. One thing is certain, these events typically happen without warning and can be challenging for businesses. A plan for the unexpected helps employers, employees, and customers know how to react.

Listed below are some of the issues organizations across the globe face after a natural disaster occurs.

Communication with Evacuated Workers

Develop policies and procedures to protect your employees and clearly communicate them to team members. Training sessions will provide additional benefits and help them to feel more confident. While you may not be able to include plans for all possible scenarios, a few broad ones will prove to be very helpful. Such as one for evacuating the building, a lockdown situation, and total loss of the physical workplace.

Payment of Wages

The employers could choose to continue their payment of wages to the employees or they could also make a fixed one-time payment to the affected employees. Don’t let a natural disaster devastate your business. You can retain your employees’ trust and build an even better workforce during a time of crisis by knowing the applicable regulations and how they might impact your staff.

Business Continuity Plan

It is vital to keep your business running if possible. By having different contingency plans in place for various scenarios helps to keep things running as normal and smoothly as they can.

Medical Coverage

This is yet another important aspect which the HR team has to focus on. Many affected employees use medical insurance to assist them with the recovery after a disaster. The HR team could make the important benefit information easily accessible to all the employees by flashing the information on their company website or make it available through communication centers in places where the employees are working.

HR Policies

Takes steps to regularly update employees’ contact information, including emergency contact information. In addition to employee contact information, phone numbers, and email addresses for clients, insurance companies/agents, and local emergency response teams should also be accessible electronically and regularly updated. Lastly, business owners should understand compliance issues that come with disasters.

Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

Most of the employees who have been a victim of the natural disasters would have gone through both physical and mental trauma. To help them overcome the trauma and return to normalcy in their personal as well as professional life, the assistance program will be of great help. The HR folks should ensure that their employees are aware of such facilities in their organization.

Further, without a disaster preparedness plan, it may mean negligence on your behalf which equates to liability and possible lawsuits. As a business owner, you also have a moral obligation to protect your employees and customers.

While a disaster plan may not be at the top of your lengthy “to-do” list, it will go a long way in getting your business back up and running in the event of a disaster.

Have you been in a situation like this recently? What other steps would you recommend to businesses and individuals to deal with and recover?

Also Read: How to choose the right HR Software