In yesterday’s Advisor, we got expert tips on developing a disaster plan. Today, there’s more on some specific disaster-planning issues and an introduction to a policy program that will help you with your disaster policy and all your key HR policies.
Who Calls 911?
If somebody needs emergency medical services, or there is another emergency, you’ve got to figure out—who’s going to call 911? says safety expert Randy DeVaul. “One of the things that has worked for many organizations is to have a central point where an employee will call, usually either the switchboard or a designated manager, and that individual calls 911. Otherwise you have every employee out there who knows that somebody is hurt dialing cell phones or dialing the phone to get hold of 911. If they flood the system, it is going to delay your response,” he says.
It’s also important to plan where the ambulance or other emergency respondents will go. Does somebody need to meet them at the gate? Can you give a door number or a gate number? Do responders need any special directions?
Assembly Areas
For either take-shelter or evacuate scenarios, people need to know where to assemble, notes DeVaul. You need to have assembly area leaders who will make sure that everybody is accounted for.
DeVaul’s Story
DeVaul was involved in an incident where a tornado came through and severely damaged a facility. In the aftermath, one employee could not be found. Search and rescue dog teams were called in; the county and the city emergency people were called—and even the state organization.
The search, conducted in dangerous circumstances, lasted for hours.
Eventually, a friend of the missing employee called his house to tell the family that this search was going on. (Not the best notification procedure, by the way, but that is another story.) The “missing” employee, the object of this massive search, answered the phone. He’d rushed home to check on his family without telling anyone.
“Use this story to drive the point home to your employees,” says DeVaul. “If it’s a hurricane, a tornado, whatever the case is, yes, employees are going to be concerned about their own families, and waiting in the assembly area is not where they want to be. But they need to understand the importance and the urgency of making sure that people know where they are and that they are accounted for.”
BLR’s SmartPolicies gives you 350 HR policies, prewritten for you, ready to customize or use as is. Click here to examine it at no cost or risk.
Critical Employees
Another issue to think through is that of “critical employees.” In most businesses, there are a few key people that you’d like to stay on-site as long as it is safely possible. They might be security, manufacturing people overseeing orderly shutdown of equipment, or IT staff making last-minute arrangements for alternate access. Of course, it depends on your operations. But it’s much easier to define those roles now, set up guidelines for what they do in various scenarios, how they communicate, and so on.
Alternate Worksites
Depending on your type of operations, you may want to consider arranging for an alternate worksite.
If you basically require phones and computers, it’s fairly easy to make such arrangements. If you’re a manufacturing facility, making alternative arrangements is harder, or maybe impossible. Even if you can’t arrange an alternate site for manufacturing, you probably do want some central place to conduct business, a place for customers and employees to be able to reach you.
Making these arrangements often isn’t all that hard as long as you do the groundwork ahead of time. For example:
- Perhaps IT needs to make some changes or put some backup systems and software in place so that it’s easy to move operations to another site.
- The phone company may be able to set you up for quick communications.
- Maybe most of your employees can work from home if they have the correct software and Internet service.
The important thing is to think it through now, not after there’s a foot of water in your offices.
How about your disaster policy? Detailed? Up to date? Our editors estimate that for most companies, there are 50 or so policies that need regular updating (or may need to be written.) It’s easy to let it slide, but you can’t afford to back-burner work on your policies—they’re your only hope for consistent and compliant management that avoid lawsuits—and cope with disasters.
Fortunately, BLR’s editors have done most of the work for you in their extraordinary program called SmartPolicies.
Don’t struggle with those policies! We’ve already written them for you, and at less than $1 each. Inspect BLR’s SmartPolicies at no cost or risk.
SmartPolicies’ expert authors have already worked through the critical issues on some 100 policy topics and have prewritten the policies for you.
In all, SmartPolicies contains some 350 policies, arranged alphabetically from absenteeism and blogging to cell phone safety, EEO, voice mail, and workers’ compensation. What’s more, the CD format makes these policies easily customizable. Just add your company specifics or use as is.
Just as important, as regulations and court decisions clarify your responsibilities on workplace issues, the policies are updated—or new ones are added—as needed, every quarter, as a standard part of the program.
SmartPolicies is available to HR Daily Advisor subscribers on a 30-day evaluation basis at no cost or risk … even for return postage. If you’d like to have a look at it, let us know, and we’ll be happy to arrange it.