Emergencies can strike at any time at any place in the world. Even the homes and workplaces are not 100 percent safe. A workplace emergency can threaten the employees and customers and force the management to disrupt or shut down operations until recovery. The employees could be forced to evacuate the company, and it takes time to recover the settings and resume the services.
It is crucial to improving emergency response planning for workplaces to cope with such situations to save life and property. This post shares some essential tips on how you can improve the emergency response for your workplace.
The potential emergencies
While developing your emergency action plan, you should think of all the potential emergencies that could happen, instead of focusing on the most common situations. Your plan should be tailored according to your site. You need to make a plan for all the potential emergencies like fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane and other situations. You never know in advance when a disaster or emergency can strike your area.
Take a field tour
The organization makes many changes over time including the changes in physical layout, nature of work and other business aspects. It is essential to examine the entire area with the help of a team and check whether your current plan is best and up to date. If the inspection report says that your program needs improvement, then you must update it to meet the present emergency requirements.
Think outside the box
Sometimes the professionals can perceive the areas that need improvement better than the individuals that are close to the organization. Contact a professional safety consultant to inspect your organization for safety issues. Most safety boards and committees would offer free consultations and inspections in the interest of updating your organization’s safety plan.
Improve the response time through Drills
Timing is the most crucial element in an emergency that is the difference between life and death. You might have an internal emergency response team that becomes active as soon as a disaster arrives. In the absence of any such situation, the response teams become sluggish and their response time increases. Conducting regular emergency drills for different situations can help them improve their response time and be ready for any emergency.
Improve your evacuation plan
Every emergency situation needs the employees and other people to evacuate the buildings and gather at a safe place. Ask the safety professionals to inspect your premises and look for possibilities to improve the existing evacuation plan. The professionals may develop new ways or improve the existing routes for quick and better evacuation. Post the evacuation procedure to all your employees and also train them for the same through drill classes.
Emergency Response training
It is essential to offer emergency response training to all the employees at least once so that everyone should know what to do in such situations. Your quick response team members may already know the steps to take in emergency situations, but you need to train the employees about the primary process of evacuation. If your company hires new employees throughout the year, you need to conduct the training drills more frequently.
Develop Disaster specific procedures
You might have an emergency response plan for all kinds of disasters that could happen in your area. However, there is a need for a particular plan for each type of emergency. The program that works for a fire may not work well for an earthquake. You should take help from the safety professionals to develop individual plans for each kind of disaster. The professional plans will keep your employees safe in all types of situations.
Coordinate with public emergency services
You should coordinate with the public emergency services to share the information about your emergency response facility. Your quick response teams need to work together with the emergency services like the fire brigade, police, and medical services. Your team should understand the capabilities of public emergency services and coordinate with them to handle any situation.
Update your safety devices
Check all the safety devices installed in your organization. The safety devices like fire alarms, fire extinguishers, and water sprinklers should be in the perfect working condition. Some devices can get jammed with time.
For example, the sensors of fire alarms may get faulty, or the nozzles of water sprinklers may get blocked due to dust. You may not know about these things until you use them in a situation. It is better to check all the safety devices regularly so that they work correctly when required.
Final Words
The above-given tips are only a handful of tips to improve emergency response planning for a workplace. Every organization needs to think more to develop its emergency response plan that is specific to vulnerability to disasters according to their location and existing response plan.