The Bureau of Meteorology has formally declared El Niño and positive Indian Ocean Dipole events, meaning warmer and drier conditions will be more likely over spring and summer for parts of Australia. After three years of wet weather due to La Niña, this is the first spring and summer with a higher fire risk since the 2019-20 Victorian bushfires.

Victorian businesses have been through a lot in the past few years and the possibility of a natural disaster can be overwhelming. But your business can adapt quickly to change and minimise disruption if you are prepared.

Ensuring plans and preparations for a natural disaster are in place is easier when using Business Victoria’s dedicated resources.

Prepare for bushfires, floods and storms

There’s a lot to think about when planning and preparing for natural disasters, but a good place to start is to focus on these essential steps:

• Emergency response plan: develop a plan that covers evacuation procedures, communication protocols and employee roles during disasters.

• Data backup and recovery: regularly back up critical data onsite and offsite, as well as have data recovery protocols in place.

• Insurance review: update your insurance policies to cover disaster-related risks and losses effectively.

• Emergency supplies: keep essential supplies like first aid kits, food, water and flashlights on hand for employee and operational support during and after disasters.

Business Victoria offers vital online resources like guidelines, checklists, and templates to simplify your planning process, whether it’s for bushfires or floods and storms.

Build disaster resilience into your business

Once you have the basics covered with the steps above, we recommend building your business’ resilience with the Disaster resilience for business toolkit. This toolkit and its companion checklist allow you to assess and understand the impacts a natural disaster could have on your business.

The free Toolkit will help you to:

• identify what will make your business resilient to disasters
• understand how you can prepare before a disaster
• keep your business trading safely during a disaster
• get your business back up and running after a disaster

To download your free copy, see our Disaster resilience for business page.

Strengthen your business practices with a free short course

If you want to dive deeper into business resilience, Strengthening business practices is a free, online short course that can give you the knowledge and skills to create a crisis plan for your business and build personal resilience.

Course topics include:

• What is resilience and why is it important to business?
• Learn why personal resilience is important for business owners or managers
• How business resilience is different to personal resilience
• Business planning: risk awareness, management, and prevention
• Understanding crisis management and how to respond

Register for the course.

Build wellbeing and mental health support into your disaster response plan

When taking steps to plan for a natural disaster, you should always consider the wellbeing and mental health of yourself and your employees. Knowing how to incorporate this into your emergency planning may seem daunting, but Business Victoria’s Workplace wellbeing hub has a wide range of free tools, resources and information on mental health and wellbeing to support yourself and your employees.

Information includes:

If you need support today, contact the Partners in Wellbeing helpline on 1300 375 330. Free, confidential, one-on-one support for sole traders, business owners and employees is available 7 days a week through trained wellbeing coaches, financial counsellors and business advisers.

Find out more information and book your session.

Start planning today

It is never a bad time to start planning for a natural disaster. They can happen anywhere, at any time. Having a plan ready can give you and your staff peace of mind that you’ll know how to respond, where to get assistance during an event and how you will recover after.