Businesses are still not doing enough to combat the threat of unforeseen disasters such as power cuts, storms, fires, floods and terrorist attacks to their company, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has warned.

According to the organisation‘s annual business continuity management survey, under half the 1,257 companies polled had any kind of business continuity plan despite expressing fears that such incidents could see them deprived of key staff and lose IT systems and files.

Small companies were the least likely to have a business continuity plan, with just 34% having put measures in place to deal with such threats, a figure that rose to 42% for medium-sized companies and an average of 48% when large organisations were also included.

Despite this, 73% of those questioned thought business continuity was an important concern for management.

The CMI is warning businesses to put in place procedures that will protect the safety of their staff and reassure them that such an event would not deprive them of a job.

“Companies need to work out what the key issues are that will stop them working,” said Jo Causon, director of marketing and corporate affairs at the CMI. “Unless organisations balance the need to safeguard buildings with the need to secure their workforce, any attempt at business continuity management will remain unfinished and inadequate.”

There were also notable differences in how companies that did possess a business continuity plan maintained them, the research found. Half those firms practised the plans at least once a year but a third of organisations didn‘t maintain them at all and 15% were aware of problems with the plans but had done nothing about it.

More than half of those managers surveyed claimed their organisation had developed a plan to counter the risk of a bird flu epidemic, the research found, but such plans tended to underestimate the likely impact on their workforce and society in general.