Small Business Training

Healthy businesses are integral to communities and business resilience is essential to ensuring that communities can bounce back after disasters. While small and mid-sized businesses often have the most to lose in a disaster, they are often the least prepared. More than 43 percent of businesses do not reopen following a disaster and 29 percent close for good within two years (US Institute for Business and Home Safety). By educating small businesses on disaster risk reduction, we help them become more resilient to future risks.

Resources

Business Continuity Planning Courses for Small Businesses

The DRI Foundation, in partnership with DRI International (DRI), offers a one/ two-day Business Continuity Management  (BCM) course to educate  small and medium sized businesses on how to prepare for disasters. As part of the offering, participants receive access to a professional network of volunteer business continuity specialists to answer questions as they work on developing and refining their plans after the course.

What is Business Continuity Management?
“Business Continuity Management is a holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organization and the impacts to business operations those threats, if realized, might cause, and which provides a framework for building organizational resilience with the capability of an effective response that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities” (The International Glossary for Resilience). In its most common holistic structural form, BCM integrates emergency response, crisis management, disaster recovery (technology continuity) and business continuity (organizational/operational relocation).

Professional Practices

DRI International developed Professional Practices to guide business entities in the development and implementation of a BCM program. Use of the Professional Practice framework can increase the likelihood that no significant gaps will be present in your program as well as increase the likelihood that the various parts of the program will work cohesively in an actual event. You can learn more about DRI International’s Professional Practices here. 

Professional Practice Subject Area Overview

Download an overview of the Professional Practices for Business Continuity Management.