The global pandemic was an unexpected event that rocked businesses all over the world. Most businesses were unprepared for the disruption that unfolded, and needed to react quickly by changing practices and adopting new ways of working.
While that threat is now over, there have been some important takeaways from businesses about what happened during that time, and the need for emergency planning is a major one. Ensuring your business is prepared for different situations is vital to its future, ensuring you can continue to operate should something unexpected happen again.
Whether you’re new to emergency planning or you need to refresh your strategy, take a look at these emergency planning measures to consider for your business.
Assess your risks
Before you can begin any kind of emergency planning, you need to consider all of the possible emergencies your business might face. This could include everything from a fire in the workplace, to another global pandemic or a natural disaster.
It’s not always easy to capture the different scenarios that your business could face, so you may want to work with emergency management experts to help you understand the risks and put an assessment together. Once you have a risk assessment in place, you can review it regularly to make sure it captures the latest threats to your business.
Put procedures in place for on-site emergencies
Some of the most significant disruptors to your business will happen on-site, such as fires or weather events. Having firm procedures in place for dealing with these types of incidents will help your employees stay safe on-site and ensure everyone knows what should be expected of them should an emergency take place.
Access to information is incredibly important here, so be sure to provide relevant information in signage, your employee intranet, in any employee manuals or handbooks, and during new employee onboarding. Regular fire safety drills could help give everyone more confidence when faced with an emergency situation.
Provide training to your employees
Training is another way to help your employees feel more confident in emergency situations. From basic health and safety to how to handle equipment safely, this training isn’t just a legal requirement, it can help save lives. Consult your employees regularly to ensure they are up-to-date in any training they need to carry out their roles safely.
But of course, this training isn’t just about localized emergencies, it’s also about how to talk about them and give moment-to-moment updates when the seconds really do matter. You can get information about the best software resources you use for properly identifying and seamlessly co-ordinating your approach. This means communication and assignment never has to be a friction point when you have larger issues to worry about.
Maintain up-to-date contact lists
All of your employees should provide emergency contact details. This should include details of how to reach them in an emergency, and who to contact in the event of something happening to them.
There are different ways you can communicate with your employees. It could be as simple as a shared WhatsApp group where you can relay information quickly, or you may need to create a phone tree so that you can pass on different communications to different teams.
Updating contact lists should be done regularly to ensure all information held is current. Add it to a list of regular actions that form part of your emergency planning.
Carry out regular test scenarios
Beyond regular fire drills, carrying out some test scenarios is an excellent way to prepare your business and staff for emergency situations. The Ready website created by Homeland Security has some excellent resources to help businesses plan ahead, including some test scenarios you could practice in the workplace.
Consider online emergencies too
Emergencies aren’t just things that happen in the physical world, they can happen virtually too. Cybersecurity is one of the biggest risks to businesses of all sizes, but many businesses will admit to being unprepared in the event of a data breach.
Creating a cybersecurity strategy can help your business plan for different events, and ensure employees receive the right training to help them avoid causing vulnerabilities in your systems. Data breaches can cause significant damage to businesses, so it’s important to prioritize this area of your emergency planning.
Put the wellbeing of your employees first
No matter the situation, the safety wellbeing of your employees should always come first. Maintaining employee safety not only involves providing them with training and putting security measures in place, but it also means checking in on them and ensuring they are healthy – physically and mentally. Your workplace should feel like a safe space to work, and instilling confidence in your business with the right emergency planning measures can help in many ways.
We don’t always know what the future holds, but planning for emergencies gives your business the best chance of surviving whatever comes your way. Get your emergency planning strategy in place to help you navigate the challenges of business with confidence.
