4 Steps To Building An Emergency Communications Plan For Your Employees
It’s important to review your emergency strategy annually
Posted on 06-27-2019, Read Time: - Min
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Emergency communication plans are one of those aspects of human resource management that are easy to overlook until you really need them — and, by then, it’s usually too late. Even though you’ll hopefully never have to deploy your emergency strategy it’s still important to review annually to make sure everyone on your team is aware of their roles in an emergency and to ensure that your strategy is updated.
Rebuilding an old strategy or creating an emergency response plan from scratch? Here are the steps you can take to creating a plan that will help you communicate in a worst case scenario.
Step 1: Consider All Audiences
While your employees are likely the primary audience you’ll be thinking about in an emergency they’re probably not the only people who will be impacted in a worst case scenario. In addition to your employees, you should also consider how you’ll communicate with:
- Family of employees
- Your customers
- Adjacent businesses
- The media
- Your board of directors or upper management
Since some of these audiences, such as the media or customers, involve elements of the business beyond the purview of human resources, it’s advantageous to work across teams to craft a uniform emergency communication strategy. Often times, as an HR professional, you might find yourself leading the conversation to start with. Try to be open to involving other teams as they see the great plan you’re developing.
Step 2: Choose the Appropriate Contact Method
Do you know how your key audiences would prefer to be contacted in an emergency? A recent SlickText survey found that 43.9% of employees prefer text notifications in emergencies. That’s not to say that phone calls or emails don’t have their place, but that a well-rounded emergency communications strategy is probably one that considers all three of the most popular communication methods: email, texting and phone.
Keep in mind that different emergencies might be better suited to different communication methods. For something sensitive, such as an event where there has been loss of life, a phone call might be more appropriate. If the situation involves an extreme weather warning, it might be quickest to send employees a text alert. If your emergency plan requires follow up communications, sending an email with additional information and next steps could be a good fit.
No matter what method you choose, make sure it has these crucial components:
Keep in mind that different emergencies might be better suited to different communication methods. For something sensitive, such as an event where there has been loss of life, a phone call might be more appropriate. If the situation involves an extreme weather warning, it might be quickest to send employees a text alert. If your emergency plan requires follow up communications, sending an email with additional information and next steps could be a good fit.
No matter what method you choose, make sure it has these crucial components:
- Simple for any staff member on your team to operate. You don’t want complicated technology to get in the way of communicating smoothly in an emergency.
- Easy to access via desktop computer or on-the-go. You’re not sure where you’ll be in an emergency, don’t assume you’ll be at your desk.
- Possible to draft and save messages. Since you’ll want to be able to craft your message in advance, it’s ideal to choose a service that can allow you to save drafts directly on the platform so you’re just a few clicks away from sending them in an emergency.
Step 3: Create Your Messaging
Not all emergencies are the kind that you can plan ahead with a communications strategy for, but some are. Think of weather events, pipe breaks, active shooter situations — you can prewrite messages that would address immediate questions and concerns in these situations. You can always tweak these messages before you send them in the event that a worst case scenario does occur, so don’t feel married to them. However, it is a good idea to have drafts already prepared to save you valuable time in the heat of the moment.
Step 4: Collect Contact Information
Now that you have gone through the steps to develop a plan, the most important element of putting your strategy into motion is getting contact information from all the key audience you previously identified and making sure your messages will get through.
- Review contact information regularly. People change their numbers or email addresses without warning.
- Collect personal and business email addresses. You never know if employees will have access to their business email in an emergency.
- Digitize contact information records you may have on file.
- Incentive employees to update their information. There’s nothing like a small contest to get people motivated.
Crafting an emergency communications plan can be painstaking, but you’ll sure be glad you took the time to prepare for a worst case scenario when something actually does go wrong.
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