Global weather patterns are changing, leading to rising temperatures and more severe weather events like flash flooding, tornadoes, and hurricanes, which wreak havoc on business operations, supply chains, and employee safety.
It’s easy for security and risk leaders to become complacent, but weather events can escalate quickly. Just this year, Hurricane Milton rapidly intensified to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 10 hours. Similarly, forecasting models experienced challenges with Hurricane Otis striking Acapulco after wind speeds jumped by 115 mph overnight, reaching Category 5 status. This and future hurricane seasons have underscored the challenges of anticipating the impacts of severe weather events.
The Cost of Severe Weather
As Helene and Milton approached, businesses in areas traditionally impacted by hurricanes, such as those operating in Florida, mobilized quickly to protect operations and employees. Mature prepared organizations accustomed to operating in higher risk locations, heeded warnings, fared better with reduced down time, and were up and running again much faster after the storms. Does better preparedness for catastrophic weather events reduce the cost to your people and operations? It appears so.
Further inland, in North Carolina particularly, heavy rainfall and flooding had unanticipated catastrophic impacts. Widespread infrastructure damage, prolonged power outages, and isolated communities halted operational continuity for many. In addition to operational resilience, it is equally important to be mindful of the loss of life and the impacts this has on our communities.
Smaller companies were forced to close, while larger organizations faced supply chain issues compounded by challenges from East Coast port strikes. The estimated financial impact was significant: catastrophe modeling by Karen Clark & Co. estimated $6.4 billion in insured losses from Helene, while recovery costs could reach $34 billion, according to Moody’s Analytics.
Even for Crisis24, with many of our employees in Florida attending the Global Security Exchange (GSX) Annual Conference, Hurricane Milton had a financial impact as our travelers changed flights at the last minute to escape the path of the storm. This meant missing out on an entire day of business opportunities for us, and many other conference attendees. It also calls into question what companies attending GSX should plan for next year as the conference relocates to hurricane-prone New Orleans.
5 Considerations for Proactive Preparedness
The biggest challenges organizations faced during these storms were verifying employee safety at the last minute and maintaining operational continuity. Crisis24’s approach to resilience begins with anticipating and planning for any risk. We always encourage our clients to have crisis management and business continuity plans in place, ensuring teams are ready to adapt and minimize the impact of severe weather or other disruptions to their operating environment.
Historically, infrastructure and continuity plans are established to be prepared for a Category 1 or 2 storm. Are you and is your organization prepared for a Category 3 or 5? Here are five tips, drawn from recent lessons learned, for organizations to proactively establish greater resilience and readiness for the next catastrophic weather event.
1. Define Duty of Care Obligations
According to our recent Employee Safety Survey, 93% of US full-time employees feel their employer is responsible for their safety during working hours, and more than half believe this extends to some scenarios beyond working hours. Addressing duty of care includes preparing for scenarios involving work-from-home, after-hours, or traveling employees to ensure comprehensive support. It's also worth considering having readily available emergency response plans and kits to ensure your employees have the information and resources they need.
2. Account For People
Knowing employees’ locations, especially in storm-prone regions or while traveling, is critical. Designate a team to oversee employee check-ins, and ensure protocols are well-communicated and practiced through regular training. Enable resilience by establishing backup team in dispersed geographic regions. This can be challenging depending on the size of your organizations.
3. Use Timely, Actionable Intelligence
It’s important to stay on top of the forecast and potential impacts of the storm. During Hurricane Helene, Crisis24 clients received synthesized and customized alerts about hurricane warnings, tornado warnings, flood advisories, and evacuation orders. This tailored and relevant real-time intelligence allowed clients to make informed decisions to take necessary precautions, account for their employees, and better support them.
4. Implement a Proven Mass Notification System
Ensure you have resilient communications, and you can reach your employees if your network goes down. A mass notification system that provides multimodal and two-way communication allows you to reach employees in multiple ways and offers a way for them to acknowledge your messages, check in, confirm their safety, or request help. Keep contact lists current and prepare pre-approved message templates in advance to streamline communications during a crisis.
5. Establish a Resilient Team
Leverage embedded resources and/or have a third-party partner ready to support your organization in a time of crisis. Embedded teams can help you proactively develop response plans and training to protect employees and operations, and improve overall resilience. As the next storm approaches, having embedded intelligence keeps you informed with real-time updates on how the storm will impact your people and facilities. Depending on the duration of the event, you’ll need additional resources to provide on-going relevant and actionable intelligence. If your teams and headquarters are impacted by an event, having an additional third-party backup team ready to step in can be invaluable.
Despite your views on climate change, the frequency and intensity of weather events is anticipated to continue worsening. Organizational sustainability requires proactive measures to ensure resilience and readiness, enhancing your ability to continue operating, surviving, and returning to normal operations. In our experience, organizations with established mature crisis management and business continuity programs reduce their downtime by two to three days, which resonates and helps to create buy-in from senior leadership and board members.
Learn how Crisis24 can help you better prepare for and respond to crises.
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