Keeping a Crisis-Centric Mindset Throughout the Year
Every month you change the filter on your furnace. Every 3,000 miles you get the oil changed on your car. Every six months you (hopefully) visit your dentist for a cleaning. Maintenance is important. It’s key to keeping you, your home, or your auto running smoothly.
Your business is no different. The office copy machine is serviced after a predetermined number of copies, and when your color printer signals a service code, you put in a call for service. But what about your emergency response plan? Your safety team already has devoted a considerable amount of time meeting regularly and putting together a well-thought out emergency response plan. Do you know where this plan is located?
Chances are, you promptly filed it or it’s tucked away on the shelf above your computer. How long has it been since you last conducted a mock disaster exercise using your emergency plan as your guide?
The emergency response plan is a living document. It should be updated whenever you add new products or services, make technology upgrades, or staff changes. Ideally, changes in the plan should be made as they occur in the workforce.
Your plan should be tested at least once a year. More frequent tests can be performed on critical items for the response such as notifications to the teams involved. These do not have to have extensive time involvement. However, if you are not able to reach the people necessary for the response, your ability to handle the crisis will be hamstrung. Without testing, you won’t know where further support might be needed, and you won’t know if your employees fully understand their role and responsibilities during a crisis.