Preparing for the Unthinkable

There are few events in our lives in which we remember exactly where we were when they happened. For our parents’ generation it was the Kennedy assassination in 1963. For ours there were two defining events. Almost everyone can remember where they were when they first learned about Princess Diana’s fatal car accident. And each of us remembers exactly where we were and what we were doing when that second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in downtown New York City 10 years ago.

Thankfully there hasn’t been another incident of that magnitude. But the events of that fateful day have forever changed our sense of security, altered what used to be routine activities such as travel and have forced us to take a more vigilant and proactive approach to crisis and security threats.

September 11, 2001 also transformed the business continuity industry. Then, infrastructure, IT systems and data recovery were the chief concerns of business continuity planning. Today, resiliency planning also encompasses operational continuity and workforce safety.  In fact, one Atlanta start-up that provides on-demand workforce safety solutions traces its roots to that infamous day.

Armistead Whitney was the president of a media company in midtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001. His company was completely taken by surprise by the attack and in the aftermath, Whitney was immediately faced with keeping his employees safe and his company operations running while maintaining revenue continuity and protecting shareholder value. Working through these issues inspired the conception of Preparis. “I felt the impact of helplessness,” said Whitney, the founder and CEO of Preparis. “We, and most companies I was doing business with, were at a loss for good information, for direction, for ways to communicate appropriately with our employees,” he added. And in preparation for the ‘next’ threat, the company began looking for options and researching best practices.

Whitney was not alone in his reaction. The events of September 11 plunged businesses into a new world fraught with threats that were previously considered improbable. Preparis was founded to help businesses prepare their employees to react and respond effectively to crisis. “While most companies have focused on safeguarding their data and infrastructure, they have failed to effectively address business preparedness and human capital as key elements of doing business in the 21st century,” said Whitney.

Industry experts agree that in a world where threats such as pandemics, terrorist attacks, workplace violence, earthquakes and other disasters are occurring with increasing frequency, businesses need to be prepared for the unthinkable. In a press release, president and CEO of the Canadian Investor Relations Institute Tom Enright said, “No sector or company is immune to a crisis; having a crisis communications plan in place is simply prudent risk management.”

While arming a company’s workforce with the knowledge, training and tools to respond effectively to a broad variety of crises may seem obvious given the plethora of disasters caused by Man and Nature that have taken place in the last five years; this ‘all hazards’ approach is not as prevalent as expected. A 2010 Forrester Research Report noted that 70 percent of business continuity planners and decision makers indicated that their organizations had plans to recover data centers and communications; but less than 25 percent of those organizations had plans to support, connect and recover their workforce. The fact that so few companies have adequate preparations to support and recover their workforce during an emergency provides a glimpse into Preparis’ challenge to educate companies on the necessity of workforce preparedness.

“A company’s most valuable asset is its people, but much of the focus for disaster preparedness has focused on IT with little attention on human resources and the workplace,” said Frank X. Dalton, general partner at Fulcrum Equity Partners and a member of the Preparis board of directors. “Adopting an enterprise-wide, highly scalable solution that prepares and protects your workforce for potential disasters from H1N1 to tornadoes to workplace violence should be a high priority for senior management who truly care about their people,” he added.

Today, Preparis has customers with offices located in more than over 150 cities around the world across different industries. The company recently partnered with Wells Fargo Insurance Services to offer a Preparis subscription to Well Fargo’s more than 20,000 national insurance customers. With the increasingly volatile weather patterns spawning ever severe weather-related crises, business’ adoption of the Preparis approach is just a matter of time.

September 2011 Newsletter

• Are Your Ready for Some Football?
• MONEY BIN: Entrepreneurs: Made or Born…?
• SPARKS: Preparing for the Unthinkable
• NOTEWORTHY: Small Business is Big Business