5 Tips for Better Emergency Preparedness Planning

The very nature of an emergency means that it’s something that you aren’t ready for. After all, if it’s something that you know the exact time and date of, it’s a disaster but definitely not an emergency. This means that the idea of being prepared for such a thing may sound… well, questionable at very least. Still, there are some things that you can figure out in advance in order to elevate the level of your preparedness to an admirable level. With that in mind and without further ado, here are the top five tips for better emergency preparedness planning.

1.      Setting your priorities

The first thing you need to establish when making an emergency plan is the issue of priorities. The number one priority is protecting the lives and wellbeing of your employees. Worrying about the property or materials comes later. In fact, if you have the luxury of time, one of your first concerns will be preventing the problem from escalating any further. This means turning off appliances, power or water valve off before vacating the premises. Just remember that this is to be done only if your life is not in immediate danger.

2.      Different types of emergency

The next thing you need to understand is the fact that there are many different types of emergency. First, you have emergencies caused by natural disasters. These are emergencies like floods, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides. Naturally, in some regions, the risk of similar emergencies is much higher. This is why you may want to adjust your drills to a particular form of scenario that’s more likely to happen. For instance, it’s completely ridiculous to prepare for a tsunami if you’re running a business located in a continental part of the country.
Then, you have man-made emergencies that come from an internal malfunction. The risk of fire caused by a faulty electrical system or a faulty appliance is just as great of a danger. These problems are better when treated preemptively. What you need is a local professional in order for them to respond as quickly as possible. For instance, if you run a Sydney-based office, you need to have a trusted level 2 electrician from Sydney on speed dial, so that you can handle any such issue as soon as it arises, instead of waiting for the problem to escalate.

3.      Predict what could go wrong

The truth is that there are a lot of things that you can’t possibly predict, however, there are more than a couple of foreseeable incidents. For instance, faulty installations usually show symptoms before just spontaneously bursting out or catching fire. Old appliances are also at risk so if you can’t replace them, at least have someone look at them from time to time. Weather prognosis and hurricane alarms are also a heads up. It’s always better to give your staff a day off than to wait and see whether things will escalate. Overall, there are so many things that you can watch out for.

4.      Think about the downtime

One of the last things you need to worry about are the effects of this disaster and one of them is always downtime. How long will it take until you can replace the appliances or move back into the office? How long until your business is fully functional? How much money and customers will you lose until this becomes true? Either way, you need to think about the downtime and the ways in which you can minimize its effect. Contacting your clients in order to let them know what has happened and for how long you’ll be unavailable is just one of the things that you should consider.

5.      Learn from previous experiences

Just because the last disaster was devastating, this doesn’t mean that you won’t land in an even worse situation in the future. For this reason alone, you need to learn from previous experiences and figure out a way to prevent such issues from occurring in the future. While this may be seen as a traumatic and expensive didactic experience, it can at least give you a chance to get something out from this horrible experience. As the old proverb goes, you either win or you learn.
As you can see, there are a couple of considerations and steps of precaution that you should definitely pay attention to when preparing an emergency plan. Sometimes it involves evacuation but, in general, it revolves around inspections and preparedness, in general. Prevention and prediction are your two most reliable tools when it comes to keeping everyone in your team safe.