Learning to Prepare For Various Emergencies

Regardless of what the emergency is, a responsible company knows that preparedness is a key factor in minimizing risk and keeping people safe. So whether a fire breaks out in the coffee room or someone walks into your company in a bomb vest, how your firm responds is key to safety.


Incidentally, someone did walk in to a class in a bomb vest (thankfully a fake). The ensuing panic and chaos is the motivator behind this article. The idea is to keep your people safe and defuse the threat. Either HR has to be trained to manage such things or the firm has to coordinate arrangements among the various departments to accomplish this goal. Needless to say, panic is unhelpful.
It isn’t just physical safety that’s at stake here. The safety of your corporate and personal information (PII) is also at risk. Recent events have illustrated how at risk corporate data and PII might be. Several government agencies and corporations have issued warnings to the public about compromised data. What can we as educators do about that?
There are credit reporting agencies that are brought in to handle massive data breaches. There are fire departments for the coffee room blaze and bomb squads to handle the people in the vest. Is there a way to stop these threats before they are live?  Possibly not because who can predict them?
What about risks from illness? Can you send the infected person home? How do you react to someone showing up in a clearly compromised state? Seat them in the back? In remote learning, this is not applicable. No one can get infected. In a lecture setting, how do you manage the risk of infection? Clearly an instructor is not liable for the infected person’s presence but it still causes disruption.
As educators, instructors and professionals, what can/should we be doing to mitigate risk? Is it our job to isolate a business professional coming to class with clear indications of illness? Certainly the person in the bomb vest is easy to identify even if we’re not sure how to handle it. Handling it is the key. In a well run company, preparedness drills help create the ability to deal with various kinds of safety issues.
Is it the job of Human Resources to coordinate and stage safety drills? Should they be teaching us how to handle the safety risks we all face? Frankly, this is rather overwhelming. How do you know when enough is too much? Clearly we are not going to be able to have a Safety Officer, much less a Safety Department. But we do need some method of coping with the exigencies of modern life. Right now if it is HR that is responsible for coordinating threat response, are they ready? Are you?