Business owners and management teams usually think about major disruptions such as fires, floods, earthquakes, or hurricanes to the overall continuity of business. Sometimes, smaller things like power outages can slip under the radar but are nonetheless problematic. It doesn’t matter where you are, a power outage is likely to occur at some point. Power outages are secondary consequences of the above-mentioned natural disasters, so preparing for them as an eventuality just makes sense, especially with Generac generators.
Before we get to the solutions, let’s look at some of the ways that blackouts can hurt your business. A power outage notably can arrest productivity as employees just sit around waiting for the power to come back on.
In retail environments, points of sale are closed, and the incidence of theft rises as all those fail-safes are rendered useless. On top of that, your customers aren’t happy either. Even though they do know at some level that the power outage isn’t your fault, they often feel that a responsible business would have implemented measures against power outages for their shopping convenience.
It is impossible to completely allay all of the negative consequences of power outages, but some things can be done to ensure some continuity for your customers and employees.
The first and most comprehensive measure against the ill effects of a power outage is a backup commercial generator. Some generators run on propane, while others run on natural gas; and usually turn on automatically once the power goes out.
Employees can turn to their smartphones, which have Office 365 or whatever programs they were using before the loss of power. Most websites and apps are mobile-friendly, so the change in screen size doesn’t make much of a difference.
Saving files to the cloud is one way to ensure that there is no lost work. Another method is employing a UPS or Uninterruptible Power Supply. This allows employees anywhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour to save their work and safely shut down their computers.
