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A workplace disaster of any nature can negatively impact your employees’ health, your customer service and possibly damage your brand’s reputation.
If your business follows the rule that ‘disasters don’t plan ahead, but you can’ you will be better able to manage the situation and even save lives.
Do you know your current level of preparedness?
Businesses which prepare for the unexpected through the use of Emergency Response Planning will always be able to say ‘yes’ to this question with confidence.
There are four issues to address: who manages the situation, how should the situation be managed, what actions will mitigate or prevent damage and what hazardous events could occur.
It is best practice to form an Incident Management Team who are regularly brought together to carry out exercises. These training exercises can cover a variety of instances, for example an outbreak of a health hazard, a work-related violence incident or a widespread fire. The team’s collective knowledge and skills to mitigate risk will demonstrate their level of preparedness and test plans to quickly respond and evacuate.
Policies and processes
Implementing widely accessible policies and processes will minimise the impact of an emergency. But we cannot stress enough the importance of revisiting these documents regularly, they are not to be brought out only at times of emergency.
Here are five mission areas to use as a basis for your disaster preparedness policies and processes:
Prevention. How to avoid or mitigate the threat.
Protection. How to protect employees, visitors and the local community against any hazards.
Mitigation. How to lessen the risk to mitigate injuries to individuals and to protect the property.
Response. How to respond during the incident to save lives and protect property and how to communicate in the aftermath. Consider having a contingency office off-site to work from to ensure the flow of communication.
Recovery. How to recover operations in the quickest time.
All staff to be included
Disaster management should not be the responsibility of the Incident Management Team, senior management, fire stewards and security staff exclusively. They will certainly be the ones to provide direction, but all staff need to draw on their knowledge and experiences to act in a responsible and safe manner during an incident.
Emergency notifications. Regular drills will ensure that all staff know what the alarms sound like to notify them to evacuate the building. It is also important to consider an alternative way to notify staff or the dedicated teams. For example, if there is a bomb threat, it is not advisable to use the fire alarm as this will result in all employees heading out to one area where they are at risk of a targeted explosion.
Chain of command. All employees should know who to look to for direction. It is also good practice to have backups in case a member of the Incident Management Team or Fire Steward Team is not in work on the day of the incident or has been injured.
Evacuation. All staff must be aware of all evacuation routes, not just the ones close to where they usually work. They must also be aware of the safe areas to head to where a headcount will take place.
Accounting for all employees
In an evacuation scenario, all employees must be accounted for. Designated members of staff must know where to access the list which details all employees, contractors and visitors on site at the time of the incident. There are several methods for actioning this.
Paper roster. While this method may be quick and easy to utilise for small businesses, it is not practical for larger companies.
Electronic roster. This approach involves the production of a list of employees from the security system. When employees enter the building, they scan their ID pass to notify the system that they are present. When exiting the site the employee will scan their ID pass to alert the system that they are no longer present.
ID scanning at evacuation point. Companies can speed up the process of accounting for everyone by asking them to scan their passes with a handheld badge scanner. This scanner will be operated by a designated member of staff once the employees arrive at their appointed safe area.
App and SMS based systems. This works only if all members of staff have a mobile phone linked to the system. App based solutions can identify the location of every phone and a SMS system can sent a text message asking if the user is safe or needs assistance. Again, this will only work if the individual is carrying their phone at the time of the incident and has taken it with them to their appointed safe area.
There are other methods your company can explore depending on the size of the organisation and technology available. But one thing is clear, it is crucial that your business has a current HR database and has the ability to access the data easily.
My HR Partner
Our database, ‘My HR Partner’ gives you direct access to employee records and their emergency contact details as well as who is on planned leave on any given day. Having this information available quickly is a vital part of any emergency procedure.
How we can help you
If you’d like to discuss any of the issues detailed in this blog, get in touch with us today. We’re here to help.
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