Despite growing concerns of safety in the workplace, 66% of respondents to an Ad Council survey reported not having a workplace emergency response protocol in place. As a designer and installer of custom security, life safety, and communications systems, Norris Inc. is dedicated to providing and maintaining safe working environments for both its customers and employees, and we strongly believe that the importance of taking the time to create a plan of action for responding to a workplace emergency cannot be overlooked.

If your business is one of the 66% without an established workplace emergency response protocol in place, it may be intimidating to know where to start. To help you begin, or asses your current plan, we’ve compiled a list of steps that can help you create a safer, more prepared business.

  1. Identify Emergency Situations: Statistically, fires are the most common type of workplace emergency, but there are many other natural and man-made situations including tornadoes, floods, poisonous gas and workplace violence that may also need to be addressed. Identify which types of emergencies are most relevant to your workplace, and how the course of action needed may differ between them. At a minimum, one fully developed response plan that could be used in multiple situations should be created.
  2. Assign Emergency Response Leadership Roles: People lose their ability to think clearly under stress, establishing a chain of command can help to reduce chaos and get everyone to safety more quickly in an emergency situation. Identify willing and able employees to take on emergency response leadership roles and assign responsibilities such as head count, announcing evacuation instructions, assisting anyone having difficulty and notifying first responders.
  3. Designate Evacuation Areas: Identify one or more safe locations to be used as designated evacuation areas for employees to assemble once they have exited the building. Identifying specific locations will help ensure that employees, as well as any visitors and outside vendors that may be in the building, can be more easily accounted for after evacuation.
  4. Create Evacuation Routes: Using building floor plans, create clearly labeled evacuation routes leading employees to the designated evacuation area(s). These should be reviewed with employees and posted in high-traffic areas such as conference rooms, bathrooms, kitchens and in close proximity to life safety equipment, such as fire extinguishers and alarms.
  5. Notify First Responders: Once at the designated evacuation area(s), the emergency response leaders should ensure that first responders have been notified and provided with critical information such as the nature of the emergency, any areas that may have been blocked when evacuating, and any employees that may be unaccounted for or injured.
  6. Educate & Practice: In addition to providing all new hires with information regarding the workplace emergency response protocol, current employees should review and practice the plan in full a minimum of once a year.
  7. Inspect & Maintain: While not specifically part of the plan of action during an emergency, even the best workplace emergency response plan will be of limited effectiveness if fire extinguishers, alarm systems, and other notification appliances are not working properly. It is extremely important to have all security and life safety equipment routinely inspected, maintained and replaced should a defect be found.

While it may be easy to put off developing and practicing a workplace emergency response protocol, remember that emergencies can strike anyone, anywhere, at any time, and having a plan in place is the best way to protect yourself, your employees and your business.

 

 

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