June is National Safety Month! And while there’s never a bad time to improve your business’s safety practices, early summer is the perfect time to make sure your employees are ready in the event of a disaster.
Why Is Disaster Safety Planning Important?
While the need for having a disaster plan in place is simply common sense, it’s good to think about the main reasons your company could benefit from having one:
- Help prevent fatalities and injuries
- Reduce damage to the building, stock, and equipment
- Protect the environment and the community
- Accelerate the ability to resume normal business operations
Related Topic: How to Be Ready for Any Disaster
How to Plan for Workplace Emergencies and Evacuations
The task of preparing your business for emergencies can be overwhelming. Start small with these 5 steps:
- Develop a disaster safety plan (disaster preparedness plan): A first step to planning for workplace emergencies is to develop a comprehensive disaster preparedness plan (also known as a disaster safety plan). The goal is to map out your company’s response before, during, and after an emergency. This includes identifying risks, training staff and employees, practicing evacuation drills and planning for potential restoration to quickly recover from fire, flood, damage from strong winds, chemical spills, etc.
- Organize with emergency services: In your planning, include representatives from your local law enforcement, fire department, and emergency medical services. They have a vested interest in community safety and can help you adjust your plan to maximize its effectiveness. You may also wish to coordinate with neighboring businesses—particularly if you’re in a multi-tenant building. You may be able to delegate emergency tasks between companies. At the very least, you can be certain your evacuation plans won’t interfere with one another.
- Outline evacuation routes and assign muster points: Identify the safest routes by which to evacuate your facility. Consider individuals with limited mobility and identify and include locations where employees can muster once they’re safe outside.
- Appoint an emergency response team: In an emergency, there are critical tasks that need to be completed. You can assign the responsibilities to specific individuals. Consider assigning the following roles:
- A point of contact for all emergency coordination.
- A person to manage all technology or equipment needs.
- A person in charge of an evacuation plan.
- A person to coordinate with emergency services.
-
Conduct evacuation drills: Having a plan in place is great, but it takes practice for your team to remember the plan when disaster strikes. Annual drills allow your staff to become familiar with evacuation routes and to become more comfortable with their roles.
What Is an Emergency Preparedness Plan, or Disaster Preparedness Plan?
Planning for every foreseeable disaster can be overwhelming. The goal of an emergency preparedness plan is to prepare in advance for the disasters that are most likely to occur.
The emergency plan should, at minimum, include these three items:
- Reporting the emergency to your staff and local emergency services. Your company needs a procedure for determining that there’s an emergency and announcing it to your staff. If the emergency is internal (like a fire or gas leak at your facility), there must be a procedure in place to contact emergency services.
- An evacuation procedure. During an emergency, your staff needs to know what to do, e.g., shut down the appropriate equipment, make sure everyone gets out of the building (and evacuate to the designated muster points where they would wait for emergency services to arrive), and that no one is left behind.
- Floorplans marked with muster points. Provide all staff with floorplans that mark safe evacuation routes for each department and point to where employees can muster outside the building.
Related Topic: What to Do After a Fire at Your Business
Rely on the Pros for Disaster Restoration Services
Developing or refreshing your emergency preparedness plan for the workplace is a great way to embrace National Safety Month.
In the event of a disaster that causes damage to your building, trust the local professionals at Rainbow Restoration to help. Our service professionals are experts in fire, water, and smoke damage restoration. We can repair the damage quickly to help get your business up and running as soon as possible. To learn more, give us a call or visit us online today.
