BUILDING THE TEAM
An agent at a conference I attended recently told me that his agency had just finished putting together a disaster-recovery plan after a year of work. It might not take your agency that long, but don’t expect to create a good plan overnight. Your first step is to assemble a planning team from within your agency. Its size depends on the size of your agency, but the team should include a representative from as many departments as possible. One agency told me how each member of its planning team worked on the plan individually, and then presented their ideas before the entire team. The team took each person’s ideas apart and put them back together to form the final plan. A process like this ensures that no important information or perspective gets omitted. I know of one agency that went so far as to include the IT manager from another agency on its planning team, in case a disaster made its own IT manager unavailable. This might not be an appropriate strategy for every agency, but building some type of 'backup' into your plan is a smart idea.
Regardless of the makeup of your planning team, your disaster plan should have the clear support of the agency owner and/or CEO. All employees should be told that it’s their responsibility to understand the plan and their role in the event of a disaster. However, I strongly recommend that the plan authorize just one person — such as the agency owner, CEO, or COO — to implement the plan.
Test your plan to make sure that it’s workable and flexible. By workable I mean that the tasks assigned to employees must be things they actually can and will do. And despite your attempt to be as thorough as you can be, it’s impossible to plan for every potential disaster. But if the basic components are flexible, the plan will allow you to react appropriately even to unanticipated events.
When your planning team has finished its work, make sure everyone is aware of the plan and is ready to play their role. You might want to publish the plan, either in printed form or on an agency intranet site. You’ll probably hold a meeting or training session and test the plan. You should also introduce the plan to new employees during their orientation and training.
YOU CALL THAT A DISASTER?
After assembling your team, the next step is to consider what type of disasters you might confront. It’s easy enough to imagine dramatic natural disasters such as fire, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornados. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that such events are only the concerns of isolated areas. For instance, we think of the West Coast when we think of earthquakes — yet one of the largest fault lines in the United States is in southeast Missouri. When making your plan, be aware of all that’s possible, not just what’s most likely.
The 9/11 attacks put man-made disasters alongside natural events at the top of our list. Such incidents don’t have to be as intentional or as dramatic as terrorist actions to have disastrous effects. Both my office and home are located near a rail line, but I must admit that I don’t know exactly what the trains are carrying when they pass by. A derailment wouldn’t damage my agency directly, but if hazardous materials were spilled, I might not have access to my office — so I have to plan accordingly.
We’re well aware of the threat posed by computer hackers who might steal our agency information or plant a virus in our system. But we often don’t give enough attention to the possible unexpected death of our top producer an incursion into our agency offices by an angry, hostile customer or ex-employee. I’ve talked with plenty of agencies that have experienced these things, and they had just as harmful an effect on the agency as any other disaster. You can’t foresee everything that could happen to your agency, but armed with a good idea of the wide range of possible disasters, you can create a flexible plan that’ll allow you to respond to anything.
TAKE CARE OF YOUR EMPLOYEES
Most agents say that serving their customers is always their top priority. But when disaster strikes, you must take care of your employees first. If they can’t get to work or if they’re overly stressed by a greatly increased workload following a disaster, they won’t be able to help your customers.
Your first response in a disaster should be to contact all employees and determine their status. Find out who’s available to come in to work and who isn’t. I know of an agency that has gone so far as to list which employees drive 'high cars' such as SUVs and which drive 'low cars.' With this information, the agency knows who can make it to the office in certain conditions and who needs transportation. You might have a 'calling tree' for determining the status of employees and getting information out to them. Another option is to use a voice-mail system, perhaps with the understanding that every employee will call the office in the event of a disaster.
Don’t forget that your employees might be affected by the disaster as much as your clients are. A disaster could close area schools, for instance, and some employees with school-age children might need to worry about day care even as you need them at the agency. Your plan might include daycare service for employees if needed.
Servicing clients affected by disaster can be stressful. If your staff is working extended hours, rotate people so that everyone gets a break. Plan to have food and beverages available for everyone in the office. An agency in Miami went even further during their response to Hurricane Andrew. They weren’t hit by the storm, but they felt its effects while helping their clients. Although it wasn’t part of their planned response at the time, they brought in a masseuse to help employees relax. This worked so well that they now keep a masseuse on retainer as a formal part of their plan.
Part of your plan to take care of employees might involve pre-emptive action. Many insurance companies have security systems that require a visitor to be buzzed through a door. That might not be something we can consider, because creating a welcoming atmosphere for clients who walk into our offices is part of what we do. But you might consider having a silent alarm installed in your reception area. One agency told me they have two such buttons in their office. Pushing one sends a general alarm indicating that everyone should evacuate the building immediately. Pushing the other signals to the back part of the office that the person up front is in distress and needs immediate help.
SET A FIRM FOUNDATION
When you know your employees are taken care of, your next concern is probably going to be your facilities. You should have a copy of the blueprints to your office. Your plan should also have contact information for power providers and other utilities for the appropriate people to speak with about the condition of the building following a disaster.
If your building is destroyed or you lose access to the site, you’ll need temporary space for the agency. Your plan should include several options that have been researched and arranged for such a contingency. You might make agreements to use space in such facilities as local schools or churches or conference rooms in a local hospital. You also might arrange for space in a local hotel, which would provide the advantage of rooms for any employees who need housing, as well as possible Internet connections.
Your plan might include the use of a mobile trailer as temporary office space. If you’ve arranged for this, bring a copy of your disaster plan to your local police department or other emergency-services department. Find out the zoning regulations for the area, and if you’d be allowed to bring the trailer to your designated spot. Because various disasters might affect more than just your office building, you should have several temporary locations in your plan.
WE ALL NEED POWER
Access to your agency might be useless if you can’t do anything once you get there. In the event of a disaster, a loss of power might affect a wide area and could be the most serious problem you have to face.
When an ice storm hit upstate New York in 1998, the weight of the ice knocked down many power lines for more than a week. Having planned ahead, one agent brought a gas-powered electricity generator to his office. The generator, however, didn’t supply enough power to heat his office and run his computers at the same time. So he had to turn the computers off for a while and run the heat to warm the office. Then, wearing several layers of sweaters, he’d turn off the heat, fire up the computer, and get as much work done as he could before the office got cold again. So if a gas generator is part of your disaster plan, know how much power it can generate, as well as how much gasoline it needs.
Your plan should obviously include alternative methods of communication in the event that you lose telephone service. Cell phones certainly can be of great help during this time. However, I suggest that you also have a backup plan. A disaster can knock out cell towers, as well as landlines. Also, if traditional phone service is knocked out over a large area, everyone might be using cell phones, which might prevent you from connecting consistently.
When putting your plan together, contact your phone service provider to see if you can sign up to pay for any special disaster plans. In many cases you might be able to subscribe to a service that puts your agency’s lines on a top-priority list, so you’ll be among the first to have service restored. You might also look into signing up for a program that would allow you to easily forward your agency’s phone number to a different number, which could be connected at your temporary location.
Even if the phone lines are intact, you might not be able to use your phone system. Many advanced office phone systems require electricity. Plan for such a possibility by keeping a 'plain old telephone' or two handy in your office.
PROTECT YOUR DATA
Our real assets (besides our wonderful employees) are the pieces of information in our offices — our data. How to protect and recover data in a disaster is a major focus of any recovery plan.
If they lost all their paper files, many agencies wouldn’t be comfortable with the level of policy detail they had on their agency management systems. Your plan might include options for freeze-drying or otherwise preserving damaged paper documents. But any disaster recovery plan should make great use of electronic document storage and management.
Managing your documents electronically means more today than just scanning documents onto a disk or hard drive. After all, it might not do you any good to have all your documents scanned onto floppy disks if your computers are damaged in a disaster.
One option is to use an application service provider (ASP) for your agency management system. With an ASP, the agency management system and data are hosted by an outside vendor with which you contract, and you access the system and your information via the Web. If your office and/or computers are destroyed or otherwise unavailable, you can still access and use the data from any other computer with an Internet connection.
Another option is to have a well-maintained backup system for your data. You can contract with some vendors to have your data backed up through an online connection once a week, for a reasonable fee. You’d still do nightly backups in your office under such an arrangement. Of course, disaster might strike a few days after your most recent weekly backup. If you have access to your nightly backup tapes in such a scenario, you can send the tapes to your vendor and have the data restored quickly.
A disaster that affects your data could also damage your computers, of course, so your plan needs to include a way to replace them. Not long after 9/11, I attended a meeting at which someone from Marsh, which experienced terrible losses in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, described how they recovered. Marsh used Applied’s WinTAM system on Dell computers. They had a disaster plan that included agreements with both Applied and Dell. Applied telephoned Dell and ordered new servers from Austin, Texas, and had someone pick them up, since many forms of transportation were shut down. A backup tape from Marsh was delivered to the Applied headquarters in Chicago, and the tape and servers 'met up' there by the end of that week. After some tweaking, the data restoration was complete and the system was up and running the following Monday morning.
Even with such a plan, you might experience delays before you can access and use your data and/or computers. Your clients still need your service during this period. One way to provide it is to have some laptop computers with basic forms and other agency software kept in storage offsite. Employees could use the laptops to take basic claims information over the phone from home. You might also want to keep some 'primitive' items in offsite storage. They might include stamps, carbon paper, boxes of paper forms, and some old-fashioned typewriters. If you lose everything else, these items might help you begin processing claims until other parts of your recovery plan have you back to full speed.
HEAR YE, HEAR YE!
Following a disaster, getting word to your clients about how they can reach you is important. If you’re in a small town, informing your clients might not be that difficult. I talked to an agent whose agency burned to the ground. He had a rather easy time notifying his employees and customers about the event, since the local TV station had a camera at the scene.
Consider holding a press conference to notify the media of your situation and immediate plans. You can also write a press release and send it to local media outlets. If it’s brief, newsworthy, and not too self-serving, some newspapers might just run the release as a story. However you plan to communicate with news media, make sure you’re consistent and treat all outlets the same. The news media make mistakes, so monitor reporting of your information and correct it if necessary. You might want to instruct your employees to not speak to the media, so that all information comes from only one source — usually your CEO or whoever is in charge of your disaster plan.
You can contact your clients directly by e-mail if you have access to your computers and the Internet. You can also have postcards ready to send to support e-mails or to use if e-mail isn’t an option. There are services that can help you do this efficiently, such as Zairmail.com — a Web-based service to which you submit your text for the back of the postcard. You also send an address list, and the service merges this information onto a full-color postcard and mails it to your address list, for as little as 49 cents per card.
NO LUCK HERE
This article hasn’t covered everything you need to do to respond to a disaster. Your disaster-planning team will think of scenarios I haven’t discussed and can plan a response in greater detail than what’s presented here.
I’ve talked with agents whose plans have been vital to their recovery from a disaster, and with agents who have survived disastrous events without a plan. Many of these latter agencies have told me, 'We were fortunate that ‘x’ worked out then, and we have our plan in place for next time.' I’m happy for all those agencies, of course, but I don’t suggest that you emulate them. Don’t be fortunate — be prepared!