Business Continuity Planning for Small Business: What Actually Matters
Big companies have continuity departments. You have a Tuesday where the internet dies, the EFTPOS terminal follows it, and your best staff member calls in sick — all before 9am. Business continuity planning for a small business is not about producing a thick document. It is about answering a handful of questions honestly, in writing, while everything is calm.
The four questions
Almost every continuity plan worth having is an answer to these:
- What does the business depend on? List the things that would stop trade if they vanished today: premises, key people, internet, a supplier, a piece of software, a vehicle, a licence. Most small businesses land on fewer than fifteen items.
- What happens if each one fails? One line each. Be blunt: “If the booking system is down, we cannot take jobs and we do not know where today's jobs are.”
- What is the workaround? The temporary, ugly version that keeps money coming in: paper run sheets, a mobile hotspot, a second supplier's phone number, a backup way to take card payments.
- Who does what, and how do we reach them? Names and phone numbers, not job titles. Include after-hours numbers for your landlord, IT support, insurer and bank.
Keep it to one page
A plan nobody reads is decoration. A single page, printed and stored both on site and off site, beats a 40-page document. If the power is out, a plan that only exists in a cloud drive behind the dead internet connection is not a plan.
Rank your risks, roughly
| Disruption | How likely | How bad | Plan for it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internet or power outage | High | Medium | Yes — workaround on the one-pager |
| Key person suddenly unavailable | Medium | High | Yes — see key person risk |
| Premises inaccessible | Low | High | Yes — brief note |
| Supplier fails | Medium | Medium | Yes — second supplier identified |
| Meteor strike | Negligible | Total | No |
You are not modelling every scenario. You are making sure the likely-and-painful ones have a rehearsed answer.
Test it, lightly
Once a year, run a fifteen-minute conversation: “It is Monday, the shop has no internet for two days. Walk me through it.” Gaps show up immediately — the backup payment app nobody installed, the supplier contact who left last year. Update the page, put it back.
The first hour
When a disruption actually lands, the first hour sets the tone. Resist the urge to fix everything at once. Confirm people are safe, establish what is actually broken versus what merely looks broken, switch to the written workaround, and tell the people affected — staff first, then customers with bookings or deadlines today. A two-line message that says “we know, here is what still works, here is when we will update you” preserves more goodwill than an hour of silence followed by a perfect explanation. Nominate one person to give updates so the phones are not answered five different ways. Then work the problem. When it is over, spend ten minutes writing down what the plan got wrong while it is still fresh — that correction is worth more than the original draft.
Where the official guidance lives
For structured templates and emergency planning advice, business.gov.au publishes continuity resources for Australian businesses, and your insurer will often review a continuity one-pager as part of a policy conversation. For cyber-specific disruption, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (cyber.gov.au) maintains current small-business guidance.
FAQ
Is a continuity plan the same as insurance?
No. Insurance pays some costs after the event; a continuity plan keeps the business trading during it. You want both, and the plan often makes the insurance conversation easier.
How long should this take?
A first pass on the four questions is an afternoon. Keeping it current is fifteen minutes a year. If it is taking much longer, it has become a document project instead of a decision project.