8 Disaster Recovery Plan Mistakes Companies Make

Disaster Recovery Plan Mistakes to Avoid

1. Not updating your DRBC plan

Many businesses will create a recovery plan and put it on the shelf to gather dust. This is a crucial mistake that should be avoided at all costs. Businesses experience turnover and the names and responsibilities on the plan will change. If the employee assigned to a task leaves your company and a new employee is not assigned to that task, when disaster strikes nobody will do the task. Best practice would be to update your plan a minimum of once a year.

2. Having only one person creating the DR plan

Once you begin creating a DR plan you will realize how complex and time intensive it can be. There are many levels and facets to a great DR plan. You need the input of various employees from different departments in your organization to insure you have considered every contingency. Create a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan team that can work together and separately on creating the entire plan.

3. Thinking your insurance policy and DR Plan are the same thing

Having good insurance is a vital part of your DR Plan but it is only a part. You will need to know how to keep your company running while you are waiting for the insurance company to write you a check. Customers understand that disasters happen, but they expect companies to have a contingency plan in place to lessen the disruption of service.

4. Not running drills

Employees need to be trained on what to expect if a disaster happens. If they have tasks to complete, they need to have that knowledge before an actual disaster occurs. Employees and their alternates should practice their tasks to make sure they fully understand how to execute them. Finding out in a drill that someone is unable to complete their task is much better then when an active event occurs.

5. Depending on a phone tree

Communication during a disaster is critical. Phone trees are notorious for failing a few levels in. You need to make sure you have a reliable communication plan in place. Put your employees, vendors, and important clients contact information in your plan for easy access. Consider hosting your plan on a platform that offers a communication feature like the one in Stay in Business.

6. Over assigning DR duties to employees

If the same employee is given the majority of the tasks to do, your company’s recovery time will be slowed. Only assign tasks to the same person that they can reasonably complete. Assigning teams to a task can help alleviate this problem. While one person needs to be responsible for overseeing the task gets done, multiple people can help accomplish it.

7. Not tracking when tasks get done

During the confusion that can occur because of a disaster, keeping track of what has been done and what still needs to be started can be a hard job. Employee accountability for starting and completing their tasks can be simplified by a tracking system or checklist. The more you can automate your reporting needs, the easier the recovery will be.

8. Not learning from a disaster

When your company has been restored to normal operations and the disaster declared over, your Disaster Recovery planning is not done. Now is the time to go over what happened and how you can improve your plan for the next event. No plan is perfect, but a well thought out plan, that is allowed to change when new information is presented, has a better chance of protecting your employees and assets. In the end isn’t that why you made a plan in the first place?