How to Maintain Business Continuity Before, During, and After Unpredictable Emergencies
By Stephanie Osorno, Marketing Copywriter at Alertus Technologies
Did you know September is National Preparedness Month? In an effort to help communities, workplaces, and schools better prepare for any emergency, we’re diving into a wide range of preparedness strategies, recommendations, and tips in a series of blogs this month!
To kick things off, we break down different ways to maintain business continuity before, during, and after an emergency.
Before Emergencies
Make a Business Continuity Plan
It’s important to make a plan for all possible threats and emergencies that could affect daily business operations, such as natural disasters, active shooter incidents, fires, and workplace violence events. So, how do you go about putting a suitable preparedness plan in place?
You can start by conducting a risk assessment to better understand your organization’s unique risk factors. A risk assessment helps:
Identify areas of vulnerability based on things like location, organization size, and building construction
Assess the probability of specific emergency situations happening
Predict potential loss scenarios
A risk assessment is most effective when it is followed by a business impact analysis (BIA) — an analysis designed to evaluate the potential business impact of identified risks. Ready.gov provides various risk assessment and BIA resources, including a risk assessment table and a BIA questionnaire, to help organizations get started with their business continuity plan.
Assemble a Business Continuity Team
Making a business continuity plan is just the beginning of the preparedness process. Your organization’s plan is more likely to be successful with an appropriate business continuity team made of team managers, coordinators, and administrators to lead the charge. Business continuity team members are usually individuals from different organizational departments or teams, depending on the business structure.
A qualified business continuity team can:
Oversee business continuity plan testing to ensure effectiveness
Regularly review and work toward improving or updating the plan
Organize employee training sessions
Help to achieve business continuity goals in the event of an emergency
With the right business continuity team, you’ll more easily strengthen operational resilience, workplace safety, and emergency preparedness.
During Emergencies
Reduce Emergency Response Times
The quicker your emergency notification process, the quicker you can mitigate harm and minimize operational disruption during time-sensitive crises. Leveraging communication assets already in place is a useful and practical way to not only expedite and streamline your organization’s alerting process, but also to receive a high level return on existing investments.
A comprehensive and flexible mass notification platform, such as the Alertus System, should easily integrate with a wide range of legacy devices and systems. These may include:
Text and email systems
Conventional PAs
Fire alarm panels
Desktop computers
VoIP phones
Digital signage
By unifying the entire emergency notification process under one integrated and multilayered mass notification system (MNS), your designated emergency response team will be empowered to simultaneously activate an alert to each integrated alerting endpoint.
Ensure Organization-Wide Reach
Audible and visual notification is essential for achieving organization-wide reach, and ultimately, resuming normalcy, in the wake of an emergency. Consider implementing both audio and visual alerting devices which use emergency tone sounders, voice synthesis, and screen display text to increase your chances of reaching everyone, everywhere, with informative and actionable alerts.
The Alertus Alert Beacon, for instance, uses bright strobes and clear emergency tone sounders to immediately capture attention. It also has the power to display a custom message about a specific emergency and how to appropriately respond. Alert Beacons can be wall-mounted in high-visibility areas and easily used in place of a conventional public address system.
An effective and reliable MNS will be Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant to account for individuals with different auditory or visual abilities.
During & After Emergencies
With powerful alerting solutions designed to rapidly disseminate critical information when it matters the most, you can protectively enhance crisis communication during and after an unexpected incident.
Here are some examples of ideal alerting tools for improved incident management and business continuity:
IP Audio
IP audio, also known as Audio Over Internet Protocol (AoIP), is a method used to transmit digital audio signals across an IP network such as the Internet. IP-based audio devices help to facilitate real-time, intelligible audio notifications within seconds, without the need for conventional analog cables.
An IP Text-to-Speech (TTS) Speaker, such as the Alertus IP TTS Self Amplified Speaker, offers a user-friendly, standalone, and highly intelligible indoor speaker that can integrate with existing audible systems. With the latest in voice synthesis technology, this speaker can convey fully customizable spoken instructions when live voice may be nerve-racking, or in some cases, impossible. A high quality IP TTS Speaker will also include remote management options for word pronunciation, updates, and audio device management to reduce emergency response times and further simplify the notification process.
Attention-grabbing audio alerts are key for rapidly heightening awareness and urgency.
Desktop Notification
A desktop alert is great for reducing panic, maintaining a regular flow of communication, and keeping everyone on the same page amid a chaotic and high-stress circumstance. For example, you could send a desktop alert such as, “The tornado warning for our area has been cancelled. You may now resume normal activities. Thank you for your patience.”
Unlike emails that may get overlooked in a crowded inbox, desktop notifications capture attention immediately with visible, easy-to-read pop-up messages directly on a desktop computer. Alertus Desktop™ Notification comes with an option to use full-screen or partial-screen computer desktop notifications, or a less intrusive ticker alert at the top of the screen.
Chrome-Based Extension
If your organization is following a hybrid or remote working model, your leadership team may opt for a desktop alerting extension. The Alertus Desktop™ for Chrome solution offers desktop alerting capabilities on Chrome browsers and Chromebook computers and tablets.
While operating remotely, employers can use desktop alerts for a wide range of business continuity communications including:
Updates on office closures, opening delays, policy and procedure changes, and more
Regular affirmation and encouragement during uncertain times
Reminders and announcements before the transition to full-time on-site work, without oversaturating email inboxes, to prepare employees for a successful return
Mobile Alerting
A mobile push notification allows you to reach employees, even when they’re away from their computer or not checking email, using just a WiFi connection. Mobile devices could also be used as an MNS activation platform, creating a true single point of activation at your fingertips.
Through activator and recipient mobile app offerings, the Alertus Mobile App Suite enhances mobile notification between authorized dispatchers and end users. Alerts could be planned ahead of time through preset emergency templates and edited on the fly to fit the specific emergency.
Mobile alerting via a WiFi connection is particularly ideal during and after a natural disaster event, when a spike in cellular network usage is likely.
While emergencies are unpredictable, these key emergency preparedness steps can help your organization plan to maintain business continuity as quickly and best as possible.
For more insight on improving emergency preparedness, be sure to check out our upcoming preparedness blogs throughout the month.