IBHS Business Continuity Planning Tool
Aids Community Resilience
As part of its commitment to building
greater community resilience in the face
of catastrophes, IBHS has launched a new
version of its original Open for Business®
program called OFB-EZ™ (Open for
Business-EZ). This free business continuity toolkit is a web-based program, which
gives small business owners the convenience of developing and storing their
continuity plans in a secure, third-party
location.
“We believe small business owners will
find the new OFB-EZ online toolkit easy
to use, administer and implement. With
OFB-EZ, small businesses can follow the
same disaster planning and recovery processes used by larger companies – but
without a large company budget,” said
Gail Moraton, IBHS’ business resiliency
manager.
“Users create a free, password-protected
account and develop their plans using
the toolkit at their convenience. The program saves all of the user’s information
for easy access at any time and from any
location,” explained Moraton.
10 Disaster Safety Review | 2013
Small businesses are a critical part of the
American economy. More than 50 percent of the working population (120 million individuals) is employed in a small
business, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau. Small businesses are essential to
the communities they serve, and play a
strong role in helping them recover after
a disaster. When local businesses reopen
more quickly after a disaster, it ensures
that those jobs are available for employees to return to, the goods and services
provided by the business are available to
the community, and the local tax base is
preserved.
Research shows that one in four small
businesses forced to close due to a disaster or more than 24 hours do not reopen. This challenge was spotlighted by
Hurricane Sandy last year. The storm negatively impacted between 60,000 and
100,000 small businesses, according to
the U.S. Chamber Foundation’s Busine