How to Prepare Your Remote Team for Hurricane Season

Here’s how to get your remote team ready right now by using a hurricane preparedness plan template.

It’s a perfect storm.

Getting ready for hurricane season may be a bit complicated for businesses this year because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Not only do you have to consider how a natural disaster could disrupt the office, but you must also think about how it would affect your employees working from home.

You realize it’s crucial to keep your business’s information technology (IT) up and running in an emergency—no matter where your workers are located. The good news is it’s not too late to prepare for a worst-case scenario.

What Should I Include in My Hurricane Preparedness Plan?

You want to make sure your business can get back up to speed as soon as the storm passes. Your hurricane preparedness plan should involve areas of assessment, communication, and drill implementation—as well as address financial and legal concerns (plus outside partners).

According to FEMA, 40% of businesses don’t reopen after a disaster such as a hurricane. That makes it essential to have a solid plan in place well before a storm threatens your area.

Assessment

You should start by evaluating the status and needs of your people, assets, and facilities. You need to know where everyone is, what equipment they have, and what they will need to function in the event of a hurricane.

Ask yourself questions such as:

• Can your employees work from home without gas, power, water, internet, or telecommunications?
• Can your employees work from home without computers, copiers, fax machines, files, inventory, or special equipment?
• Will your employees be able to continue working if their homes are damaged?

Next, ensure all necessary emergency equipment is on hand and serviceable. An internet connection and electricity are likely the two most important factors in your employees’ ability to work from home. Consider whether you need to invest in portable generators and mobile hotspot access.

Lastly, verify solid plans exist for securing sensitive assets, data, and equipment. Determine whether you have safeguards in place to protect against network hacking as well as physical theft of your devices from employees’ homes. A proactive managed IT services partner can help you identify and close those gaps before storm season begins.

Communication

During an emergency, you have to be able to communicate with your team. Make sure you have updated contact information on all of your employees, vendors, etc. in both digital and print versions. They should have various ways to contact you as well. It’s also good to have a communication tree system in place to pass along messages and make sure everyone is included and accounted for.

You should conduct an employee awareness campaign that educates your team about the safest response before, during, and after a hurricane. This could be done as a webinar or sent out over email. Discuss topics like shelter locations, emergency communication plans and policies, when to evacuate (when advised), seeking higher ground for flash flooding, and avoiding entering floodwaters.

Confirm your team has access to hurricane preparedness handouts and other relevant resources that will help them manage during a natural disaster. They should also be familiar and up to date on any company policies that are relevant to emergencies. WheelHouse IT’s free hurricane communication templates can give you a head start on messaging for employees, clients, and vendors.

Drill Implementation

Conducting drills will look quite different than the norm this time around because your team is scattered in different locations and not together in one building. Nevertheless, you should still create emergency response teams and lists that identify clear roles and responsibilities for each person so they can be activated if needed.

You also must clearly define a timeline for the execution of your plan in relation to landfall. Decide if your plan will go into effect before the eye of the storm reaches your area, as it’s making landfall, or after it’s passed through the region. Put together, in order, the series of steps that need to be taken from the time the hurricane hits until the all-clear is given.

Finally, rehearse! Create scenarios where your emergency response teams and preparedness plan are put into action. Have your employees use an alternate power source. See if they can connect to and work off of a mobile hotspot. Run through situations where a communication tree system must be used to get in touch and check everyone’s welfare.

Financial/Legal

You should take a look at all of your existing contracts, policies, and agreements for any mention of hurricane response and recovery. Be aware of any obligations you may have to maintain with customers, vendors, suppliers, and other business partners in the event of an emergency.

Financially, assess whether you will be able to meet payroll if your business income is interrupted by a hurricane. If so, estimate how long that could last before the money runs out. Research the possibility of applying for emergency loans, disaster assistance funds, and other financial assistance that could help you support your team.

Keep the three Ps in mind: paper, pictures, and property:

• If your employees are keeping important documents in their homes, make sure those files are protected or copies are stored securely online.
• Have your team take pictures of their equipment for potential insurance claims in case their device gets damaged.
• Make a list of the makes, models, and serial numbers of your staff’s computers, tablets, and phones in case you need to prove that equipment is company property.

Having a mobile device management solution in place before a storm hits makes it significantly easier to track, lock, or wipe devices remotely if they are lost, stolen, or damaged during the chaos of a natural disaster.

Outside Partners

If you employ contractors as well as full-time staff, don’t forget to include the freelancers in all of your plans, policies, and procedures, especially if they work remotely and use your equipment.

It wouldn’t hurt to get in touch with your suppliers before a storm hits to go over their emergency plans, too, and understand how their response may affect your business—and vice versa.

Do a little foreshadowing and evaluate the potential impact a hurricane could have on your clients and customer service capabilities to get ahead of critical issues and possible problem areas.

How to Prepare Your Remote Team for Hurricane Season

Now you know how to get your work-from-home employees ready for the season by using a hurricane preparedness plan template.

By focusing on areas of assessment, communication, drill implementation, financial and legal concerns, and outside partners, you’ll be able to take care of your team whether they are in a cubicle or at a kitchen table.

You can find a wealth of resources on hurricane preparedness in the WheelHouse IT Storm Resource Center. Feel free to use our hurricane preparation and response checklist, check out our hurricane communication templates, or search for other information that will help you weather the storm and get back to business.

For additional guidance on building a resilient IT infrastructure before a storm strikes, the Ready.gov Business Preparedness hub and the National Hurricane Center are excellent starting points. You can also download FEMA’s guide to salvaging water-damaged family valuables for post-storm recovery steps. And for a deeper look at IT disaster recovery planning, WheelHouse IT’s comprehensive guide to disaster recovery walks through everything your business needs to be ready before the next storm season.

Keep Your Business Running No Matter What the Season Brings

Hurricane season doesn’t have to mean business disruption. With the right IT infrastructure, a tested continuity plan, and a technology partner who’s been through the storms, your team can stay productive and connected even when conditions are anything but calm. From cloud-based Microsoft 365 solutions that keep your data accessible from anywhere, to security and compliance tools that protect your systems when they’re most vulnerable, WheelHouse IT helps South Florida and New York businesses stay storm-ready year-round.

Don’t wait for a storm warning to start preparing. Reach out to our team today and let’s build a plan that keeps your business moving no matter what the season brings.