In the past, many business contingency plans have focused on something disastrous happening within or to the company. They did not necessarily take into account the human aspects or, the fact that the disaster might be outside of the company. 

These additional possibilities need to be considered when developing a recovery plan for an organization: 

• Locus of impact – what is the crisis limited to?

• Duration

• Operational impact

• Employee impact

• Reputation

The most common error many companies make after a crisis is rushing to return to “normalcy.” Every disaster will require an in-depth review to see how the organization has been impacted on all levels in order to successfully move forward.