It couldn’t happen to me… could it?
We might be tempted to think that it will never happen to us, particularly if we’re one of the fortunate few who have never experienced anything particularly bad or disruptive in our business.
Unfortunately though, things do go horribly wrong from time to time. And the reality is that bad things don’t just happen to other people. History is littered with the casualties (large and small businesses alike) of events that they thought couldn’t possibly happen to them.
In reality, almost every business is likely to suffer some sort of disruptive or damaging event or situation during its lifetime. While the consequences of many of these events will, though painful, be manageable or at least survivable, for the unlucky or unprepared some of them will have the potential to seriously damage the business. These more serious events will range from the headline grabbing fires, floods and explosions, through to product and environmental contamination, fraud and theft, and to the less news-worthy but equally debilitating power or technology failures and supply chain or cash flow problems.
The statistics don’t make particularly happy reading:
• There were over 11,600 commercial fires in the UK in 2006². The average cost of a fire in a commercial building is estimated at £43,800.
• Loss of IT affected approximately 40% of businesses in the 12 months to January 2009.
• There are more than 1.6 million reported workplace-related injuries in the UK each year (only about 40% of major workplace accidents are actually reported).
• Some 25% of UK businesses were adversely affected by extreme weather conditions (including floods and high winds) in 2008. The figures for 2007
2 The latest year for which figures were available at the time of publishing. 20 CHAPTER 1
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