In the globally connected world, most organisations have staff that travel overseas, making it more important than ever to have an effective emergency communications plan in place in order to contact geographically dispersed staff during a crisis. This is especially important given that the latest Emergency Communication Report, published by the Business Continuity Institute revealed that one out of three organizations report their employees travelled to high risk countries.
With increasing physical security challenges experienced by organisations due to rising levels of concern surrounding workplace violence and acts of terrorism being able to communicate effectively with staff may have the added advantage of increasing safety. Patrick Alcantara, Senior Research Associate Business Continuity Institute commented, “A robust emergency communications capability is a crucial, often life-saving, component of incident response. This becomes more important considering ever changing threats which often impact on the physical safety and well-being of employees and customers.”
Further findings from the report include:
- One third of organisations (32%) report that at least 100 employees travel internationally
- The top reasons for triggering emergency communications are: unplanned IT and telecommunications outages (42%), power outages (40%), adverse weather (39%), facilities management incidents (23%), cyber security incidents (22%), and natural disasters (22%)
- Around 7 out of 10 organisations stated that their emergency communications plan had been activated during the last year, other than during an exercise
- More than 6 out of 10 organisations (62%) are not confident about their preparedness for a location-specific security incident (e.g. workplace violence, act of terrorism)
Training, education and exercising are good ways to improve emergency communications plans, yet many organisations still have gaps in their training and education programmes related to emergency communications plans which serve as a barrier to embedding this capability. There are also gaps in exercising these plans.
The human element of emergency communications has a significant role in its success. Lack of understanding from recipients is the top reason in failing to deliver effective emergency communications. There is a need for organisations to plan their messages and deliver these in a concise and sustained way in order to raise response levels and direct recipients to perform required actions that may save lives during an incident.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
