SAFETY TOPICS
Emergency Preparedness for Your Business
The actions taken in the initial minutes of an emergency situation are critical. A prompt and clear warning to employees to evacuate, shelter, shelter-in-place, or lock down can save lives. A call to public emergency services with accurate information helps dispatchers send the appropriate responders and equipment. In addition, taking proactive measures to identify potential emergency scenarios can help determine resource requirements and develop an emergency response plan for your business. Emergency preparation can be challenging due to many unknown and unpredictable factors, but you can be better positioned to handle disasters when an emergency response plan is in place.
Safety priorities
Every business should develop and implement an emergency response plan to protect employees, visitors, contractors, and anyone else on-site during an emergency. When an emergency occurs, the first priority is always protecting lives. Protecting the lives of people on-site can be achieved through ordering evacuation, sheltering, shelter-in-place, or locking down. Here’s more on how to determine which measure to take depending on the emergency situation.1
- Evacuation: Everyone must exit the building and relocate to safety when there is a hazard within the building, such as a fire or chemical spill.
- Sheltering: Everyone must move to the interior of the building and away from windows when a tornado or severe thunderstorm warning is broadcast.
- Shelter-in-place: Public emergency officials may order people to remain indoors and for anyone working outside to enter a building immediately if there is a chemical explosion nearby or an act of terrorism has occurred. Move to the highest floor in a multistory building and avoid the basement.
- Lockdown: If an act of violence occurs, and running is not an option, employees should hide and remain silent. Seek refuge in a room, close and lock the door, and barricade the door if it can be done quickly.
The second priority is stabilization of the incident. Actions such as extinguishing a fire, administering first aid, containing a hazardous chemical spill, or handling a threat of violence can help stabilize an incident and minimize potential damage. Depending on the response time of emergency services and the hazards within your facility, you may choose to take steps to stabilize the incident. The actions your business will take to help protect lives and stabilize the incident should be explained in your emergency response plan.1
Developing an emergency response plan
The first step in developing an emergency response plan is to conduct a risk assessment to identify potential emergency scenarios. An understanding of what types of emergencies could happen will help determine procedures based on the resources needed for incident stabilization. Here are some items to consider while developing an emergency response plan.1,2
- Plans should define the most appropriate protective action for each potential emergency scenario and how these actions will be communicated.
- Determine how you will warn people to take protective action.
- Develop protocols and procedures for alerting first responders including public emergency services, emergency-trained employees, and management.
- Assign responsibility and train employees on controlling access to the emergency scene and keeping people away from unsafe areas. Other designated employees should be familiar with the locations and functions of building controls, such as electrical and water systems, emergency power supplies, and fire suppression systems.
- Provide a copy of the site-plan and floor plans to the public emergency services that would respond to your facility and to those responsible for building management and security.
- Training is essential to ensure that everyone knows what to do when there is an emergency or disruption of business operations. Employees should receive training to become familiar with safety, building security, information security, and other loss prevention programs.
- Facilitate exercises to practice the plan, familiarize employees with the plan, and identify any gaps or deficiencies in the plan. These should be designed to engage team members and get them to work together to manage the response to a hypothetical incident.
Crisis communications plan
When an emergency situation happens, the need to communicate is immediate. Customers will need to know how they’re impacted, and employees and their families will be concerned and want more information. You must be able to respond quickly, accurately, and with confidence in the hours and days following an emergency. For this reason, your emergency response plan should include a crisis communications plan. It’s important that you determine your potential audiences, create scripted messages for each audience depending on the scenario, and include a list of resources for disseminating information following an emergency situation.2
If you would like additional information on emergency response plans, please contact your Summit loss prevention consultant.
Footnotes
- Emergency Response Plan.” Ready.gov., U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, updated 04/28/2022, www.ready.gov/business/implementation/emergency (Accessed Mar. 23, 2023).
- “Crisis Communications Plan.” Ready.gov., U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, updated 02/17/2021, www.ready.gov/crisis-communications-plan (Accessed Mar. 23, 2023).
Disclaimer
The information presented in this publication is intended to provide guidance and is not intended as a legal interpretation of any federal, state or local laws, rules or regulations applicable to your business. The loss prevention information provided is intended only to assist policyholders of Summit managed insurers in the management of potential loss producing conditions involving their premises and/or operations based on generally accepted safe practices. In providing such information, Summit Consulting LLC does not warrant that all potential hazards or conditions have been evaluated or can be controlled. It is not intended as an offer to write insurance for such conditions or exposures. The liability of Summit Consulting LLC and its managed insurers is limited to the terms, limits and conditions of the insurance policies underwritten by any of them.