How does your company respond to an internal emergency?

Who responds to the incident? What is the role of the team or individuals? How do different groups or departments organize the effort? In many companies, the response to an emergency involves two or more departments, yet there are rarely written plans or processes to coordinate the response. The goal of this article is to build the case for developing the “Company Responder Team” concept in your organization.

Company Responder Team Members

A “Company Responder Team” is a cross-functional team composed of individuals from four employee groups or departments: Facilities, Security, Reception, and Floor Wardens or Employee Emergency Response Teams (EERT). These groups are often immediately deployed to an event. They coordinate their activities and depend on each other for information and support. The goal of a Company Responder program is to formally recognize this effort and establish coordinated plans and training to ensure an effective response.

What Does Everyone Do?

Your first activity is to develop the emergency roles and responsibilities for each group. Clear identification of roles has many benefits:

• Avoids duplication of efforts.
• Demonstrates areas that might have been missed.
• Notes areas where communication and coordination between groups are essential.
• Assists with the appropriate deployment of limited resources.

Let’s look at each of the likely member teams.

Security

As might be expected, Security is a primary first responder and often serves as a hub of emergency response activity and communication within a company. With an obvious emphasis on issues related to protection, such as managing physical security and visitor entry, this group also coordinates with local law enforcement and, if the need arises, with Federal responders such as the FBI or ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). Often, Security is also tasked with providing medical response and support (such as first aid and/or AED responder services).

If Security has a 24×7 Security Operations Center (SOC), it will likely provide a 24-hour emergency contact number for multiple locations and may also serve as a dispatch service for the local facility. The SOC of a large company may also serve as a 24×7 “one-stop” number for emergency response worldwide.

Facilities

Facilities is also a primary first responder for the company. They are usually the first point of contact for building-specific issues. Their emergency role is to respond to building emergencies and coordinate with local emergency responders, particularly the Fire Department, Search and Rescue, and Hazardous Material Teams. This department is often responsible for developing emergency procedures, maintaining emergency response equipment (such as life safety and fire suppression systems), training Floor Wardens or EERTs, and conducting fire drills for the building.

Reception

A Reception Team may not be thought of as a company responder but they often provide a key role as a central hub for communication. Many companies use the receptionist’s line as the primary number to call in emergencies, or the reception area as a central meeting or reporting location following an incident. Because of this “central hub” role, it is critical that they be part of the Company Responder Team. In addition, because many companies depend on “grapevine communication,” they may have access to more and better information than you may know. They are also often the first official company representative to greet local fire or police responders.

Floor Wardens or Employee Emergency Response Teams (EERT)

Trained employees are a great asset to a Company Responder Team. Floor Wardens or Employee Emergency Response Teams (EERT) typically assist with building evacuations and may also be trained to provide volunteer medical assistance. A rule of thumb for a reasonable number of EERT members is approximately 10% of the employee population. (Employee distribution across floors and shift workers may require some adjustment to this percentage.)

Most companies fill these roles with employees who have volunteered for the service. Why would an employee want to take on this role? They may come to the team with a deep personal interest in preparedness, want to learn more about personal preparedness and how to apply that knowledge at work to take care of their family and loved ones, or want to broaden their knowledge and skills. Floor wardens are often the eyes and ears of the program in the work areas – after all, that’s where they are located!

Company Responder Plans

In an ideal world, each group in the Company Responder Team would have its own written emergency procedures, and these procedures would be integrated. The types of procedures you should have in place depend on the risks you are likely to face in your area. Conduct a hazard risk assessment for your area, and then ensure that you have written procedures for the most likely emergencies in your area. This list may include procedures for some of the following events:

Natural Hazards

• Earthquake
• Tsunami/Tidal waves
• Volcanic eruptions

Weather

• Flooding
• Hurricane/Typhoon
• Tornado/Cyclone
• Severe winter weather

Human

• Medical emergencies
• Bomb threats
• Security issues
• Workplace violence
• Hazardous material release
• Infectious diseases (such as pandemic influenza, measles)

Develop and Integrate the Procedures

Once you inventory the emergency procedures for your location and each group, you may need to write new procedures to ensure that each group has the appropriate written responses. Once all procedures are developed, it is now critical to ensure that they are integrated to ensure a seamless response.

Emergency procedures can be designed to stand alone or to be integrated into the overall program. Ideally, you should be able to look at each team’s procedures and see their role, along with the roles of the other teams, in the same document. If you choose an integrated approach, highlight each team’s role using different color types or fonts so the eye can quickly see who is who and who is doing what.

Integrated Training

One important component of the Company Responder program is training. If your company currently provides training to these groups, it is likely done in a silo. In other words, the teams are likely trained separately, with no coordination or integration with the other teams. An ideal training program will include both individual and team training to achieve the best results.

Training Schedules

A model training program will take a two-pronged approach: train the individual departments, then bring together the Facilities, Security, and Reception teams for a single team training session. (Floor Wardens or the EERT often have their own training program and train with the Company Responder Team through actual field response activities, such as fire drills.) It is wise to develop an annual training schedule that lists all training courses, team requirements, and actual training dates.

Training Courses

A likely set of training topics is shown below, listed by group:

Security

• Physical security procedures
• Incident Command System (ICS)
• CPR/AED
• First aid
• Bloodborne pathogens

Facilities

• Internal life safety emergency procedures
• Fire Life Safety Director Certificate
• Incident Command System (ICS)
• CPR/AED
• First aid
• Bloodborne pathogens

Floor Wardens / EERT

• EERT procedures
• Fire drill protocol
• CPR/AED
• First aid
• Bloodborne pathogens

Reception

• Internal reception procedures
• Communication in an emergency
• Dealing with difficult people
• Radio training

The Power of the Exercise

The other key aspect of this program is exercises. Once the team has been trained, you can begin to develop them further through exercises. Adults learn best by doing, not by listening. The power of an exercise is that team members learn their role in their intellect, their body, and “in their bones,” if you will. “Learning by doing” leads to better retention and a more effective team. There are five basic types of emergency exercises; each plays a role in team development. Each type can be used in a progression, keeping pace with the team’s maturation. You may elect to start with exercises for the individual teams; as they progress in their abilities, combine exercises until all four teams are part of a comprehensive exercise.

Orientation

Uses a simple narrative and is delivered using a PowerPoint slide format in a conversational, non-threatening manner. It is often used to orient a team to a plan or a plan to a team.

Drill

Supervised field response activity with a limited focus to test a particular procedure. Drills usually highlight and closely examine a limited portion of the overall emergency management plan. A fire drill is a classic example.

Tabletops: Basic and Advanced

Basic tabletop – Uses written and verbal scenarios to evaluate the effectiveness of an organization’s emergency management plan and procedures and to highlight coordination and responsibility issues. Tabletop exercises do not physically simulate specific events, do not use equipment, and do not deploy resources.

Advanced tabletop – The same aspects as a Basic tabletop, but with the addition more advanced injects to move the story forward, It also includes a Simulation Team present in the exercise room who the interact with the players and the injects, injecting a sense of reality.

Functional

Simulates a disaster in the most realistic manner possible without moving real people or equipment to a real site. A Functional exercise uses a carefully designed, scripted scenario with timed messages and communications between players and simulators.

Full-Scale

Tests the mobilization of all or as many response components as possible, takes place in “real time,” employs real equipment, and tests several emergency functions.1

Beginning An Exercise Program

Start with an Orientation exercise and the team plans. Develop a straightforward narrative from your risk portfolio, then walk the team through it. Prepare questions that require them to reference their plan, helping them “learn it again.” Sample questions may include: “Based on this situation, what would be your first response?” “How does your team come together to assess the problem?” “Where do you meet, who is in charge, and who communicates with whom?”

These teams are most familiar with drills. They often already conduct fire, earthquake, shelter-in-place, or radio drills. These drills are straightforward, easy to organize, and involve completing a single field response activity, such as evacuating the building or conducting “duck and cover” drills.

Next, move your team to Tabletop exercises, which are more experiential and continue to challenge and mature the learner. Progress to a Functional exercise, which is more realistic and requires the teams to do everything they would normally do to solve the situation (albeit in a conference room). Finally, coordinate a Full-Scale exercise, which ties it all together: a realistic experience and the requirement that the team actually perform the skills in the “outside world.”

One Final Word

The best program in the world requires one critical thing to remain vital and current – maintenance. You must maintain your procedures, plans, and training and exercise program. The good and bad news is that you’re never done. This is an ongoing activity. But the good news is that the rewards are great! With this type of program, you get a company team that can respond to the likely emergencies in your area with an effective, clear, and coordinated response.

Think about it – what else would you want?

#####

1 Emergency Management Exercises: From Response to Recovery – Everything you need to know to design a great exercise, Regina Phelps, Chandi Media, September 2010.