Businesses are being urged to implement continuity management procedures in order to deal with potential crises.

Research by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) revealed that the many businesses are unprepared to cope with crises such as online attacks as well as bad weather and outbreaks of disease.

The Managing Threats in a Dangerous World report found that the threat of cyber attacks is increasing as almost two thirds of managers have said that their business' online security is a growing concern.

In addition, nearly a third of British organisations have reported suffering a cyber attack over the previous year as

12 per cent of firms have lost confidential information and nine per cent experienced a hacking attempt on their network.

The report also found that businesses are ill-prepared for natural phenomena such as heavy snow, which caused problems to almost every UK organisation last year either through employee absence or travel disruption.

More than half of British companies were also disrupted by the volcanic ash cloud which grounded flights and the influenza epidemic that caused significantly higher levels of staff absence over the New Year period.

The report discovered that organisation's are taking notice of high profile incidents of business planning failure such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the launch of the Wikileaks organisation which publishes classified business details.

Ruth Spellman, chief executive of CMI, said that British managers must implement planning procedures that deal with unexpected events as every time there is major disruption the UK economy loses millions.

She said: "Anticipating and planning for threats will help drastically reduce the negative impacts on your organisation, should they occur, as well as helping you recover faster from any ill effects."

British businesses should employ the services of performance improvement consulting experts as these consultant professionals will have the experience to help an organisation implement policies that help plan for the unexpected.

All organisations have a responsibility to their stakeholders, shareholders, customers, employees and partners to develop plans to ensure they can continue to operate through difficult or uncertain circumstances," said Ms Spellman.

The CMI report demonstrated that British managers need to take potential crises more seriously as even though 82 per cent though that continuity management was either important or very important only 58 per cent said they had such policies in place.

Britain's private sector managers are being encouraged to implement business continuity management procedures as less than half of private organisations are prepared for threats to their day-to-day running.

Author Martin Hofschroer is from Himsworth Consultancy, a leading management consultancy firm of senior business and consultancy professionals that specialise in improving corporate and operational performance, delivering world-class customer service improvements and offering alternatives to business and functional outsourcing. Visit http://www.himsworthconsultancy.com/ .