HWI Chartered Accountants Auckland

Firstly, everyone is grateful that so far there has not been any reported loss of life.  And we hope that those who were injured do make a full recovery in due course.

Secondly, there are many commercial lessons that all business owners and managers can take away from the Christchurch experience.

1. All your employees should have an emergency contact phone number for work, so that they can ask you when to come back in and help with the clean up; conversely you should have an up to date listing of all their addresses and phone numbers; You can arrange with your phone company to use call diversion at the time if that number is no longer connected to a phone or a building.
2. Do you have adequate provisions for staff to stay over at the factory or office for a night or two if they cannot get home?  Can you boil or add bleach to water to purify it, do you have a good quality first aid kit that hasn’t had all the panadol and band aids picked out of it?
3. What do your employment agreements say about your responsibilities for payroll in the event of a civil emergency?
4. If a civil emergency happens during working hours, do you have a plan, to shut off power and gas, back up the computers and secure the building before you evacuate the business. Your staff will be more concerned about children coming home from school alone and family at home; Do your computers do continuous backups throughout the day? Preferably to a location outside of your district of operation.
5. Does your business deal in emergency goods, food, medicine, camping equipment, candles, batteries and matches?  If possible you will need to find a way to stay open to prevent looting of these goods.  Also, have arrangements with your suppliers to get more stock or to delay stock.  You should have your supplier’s phone numbers on your cell phone.
6. Make sure you have appropriate insurance both commercially and privately.
   Business interruption
   Building
   Contents
   Loss of personal income and mortgage repayment insurance if necessary
7. Do you have or could your business operate from an alternative site in an emergency?
   
   

Did you know?
Did you know that HWI Limited can help you draft and lodge a tax payment plan with the Inland Revenue Department if you are behind with your tax payments?