This guide outlines the strategies to ensure you are prepared for an emergency in your business.
No matter what kind of business you are engaged in, if you have employees who work for you in any kind of setting, you need to have certain emergency procedures in place. The quality of those procedures is important, because it determines how likely or unlikely it is that you and your people will escape from the situation unscathed. These are often the kinds of situations we don’t really want to think about too much, but nonetheless as a business owner they are one of your main concerns, and you need to make sure they are all in place. Let’s take a look at how to ensure that your emergency procedures are as good as they should be.
Risk scenario analysis to be prepared for an emergency
To guide your company o be prepared for an emergency, start by knowing the risk situations that may arise in your business and after identifying each one, depending on each risk, it is necessary to prepare an emergency plan.
By creating a committee o be prepared for an emergency, it studies the threats and analyzes the different risk scenarios that can affect your business, such as responding to a case of fire, information theft, property theft, financial or electronic fraud, natural disasters, etc.
It is important that you take into account the following aspects when conducting the analysis:
– Areas that can be considered safe or risky in the physical structure of your business.
– Elements that may affect in the event of a natural disaster, such as power lines, fuel stations or gas installations.
– Systems for the rapid evacuation of personnel.
– Accessibility for emergency teams.
– Extinguishers and indication of visible emergency exits.
– Response time of the emergency team.
– Take into account the industrial processes and their facilities, since they are normally a high-risk area.
– Before and periodically carry out evaluation drills with all personnel.
Evaluate your resources
According to the analysis of the risk scenarios that may arise in your business o be prepared for an emergency, evaluate what are the resources you need in your company to respond to different emergency situations. And check the security elements you have in the company (fire extinguishers, first aid kit, alarm systems, etc.)
Take action
Determine which are the phases that your action plan contemplates o be prepared for an emergency:
– Mechanisms to detect the emergency
– Alert all staff
– Intervention of the emergency team and personnel according to the procedures established for these cases.
– If necessary, contact external emergency agencies, like the Royal Ambulance service, and support groups to contain the situation.
Develop a manual or tangible plan o be prepared for an emergency
All the procedures and actions to be followed for each emergency situation must be included in a manual for the knowledge of the staff in general.
Communicate and evaluate
After the emergency plan for claims is duly drafted, it is essential that all the employees that make up your company know the measures to take and the procedure in the event of an emergency. Training through workshops or awareness-raising talks for workers will serve as support, both when preventing a dangerous situation and when implementing the emergency plan.
It is advisable to do periodic tests to evaluate and analyze the behavior of the employees and the opportunities for improvement that can be added to the original emergency plan.
Well planned
The most important quality of any emergency procedure is that it is well planned, otherwise you never know what might actually happen on the day. It is important to note that you cannot plan for every single eventuality, and you never know what will actually happen, but you can plan for such situations as finely as possible. The truth is, you want to develop emergency procedures which are well planned enough that everyone knows what they are intimately, but they don’t interrupt things too much. This is a tricky balance to find, but mostly it is just a matter of trial and error.
Available to all
Sometimes, you walk into offices and other workplaces, and there is no hint anywhere of their emergency plans. Of course, you don’t necessarily want these displayed on the main notice board the whole time, but they do need to be somewhere where everyone can get to them at any time. It is not a bad idea to have a small poster explaining the basic points somewhere like the staff room, as this ensures that it sinks in to people’s brains over a long period of time. However you do it, you must ensure your employees are able to access the information at all times.
Working equipment
At some stage — and at regular intervals — you need to go through the different parts of the process for your emergency procedures, and ensure that every aspect of them is working as well as possible. This means checking every piece of equipment which might be used during the procedures. Things like fire extinguishers needs to be in full working order the whole time, and you should carry out a frequent emergency light test to make sure that people can see the way out in an emergency.
Test runs
Finally, it is well worth engaging in test runs every now and then, just to make sure that everything works exactly as it should. Your test runs should involve everyone that would be involved in the real thing, and it is worth the time taking everyone away from their desks for this. With frequent test runs, you can be confident that everyone will know what they are doing in the real thing, and that should give you a greater peace of mind.
