EMERGENCY PROCEDURES IN AN ORGANIZATION

Emergency Procedures in an Organization



Emergency Procedures in an Organization

Introduction

When recuperating from an emergency, an organization must be prepared to draw primarily upon its own people, files and other resources. Having these resources available when needed requires careful and intensive planning and preparation. The exact nature of these procedures will be determined by the nature of the emergency to which an organization could be exposed.

An emergency recovery plan has a single goal: to assure that an organization's operations, employees and assets effectively survive the impact and consequences of a disastrous event. By its very nature, an emergency creates a new operating environment (Colvin, 2001). The emergency recovery planning process will facilitate the continued operation of an organization during and after an emergency, and will minimize its aftereffects.

Discussion

Let's take a look at some of the unique challenges you face. You have to be a coordinator, mentor, mother, and bully.

First you have to establish whether your company is serious or just looking for another book to put on the shelf. If it is serious, you should have the backing of your senior management. This backing must be made known throughout the organization.

The best way to publicize management's backing is to have your CEO or president instruct senior managers to spread the word and give you all the support you require. That puts everyone on notice and smoothes a lot of roads. You will still meet resistance when you require a specific commitment, but you will have a little leverage (Colvin, 2001).

Your next challenge is to identify the critical departments of your company through a risk analysis and determine what it would take to keep them in business or reestablish their business function after a disaster.

Since you do not know precisely what makes those departments work, how do you decide what they need to continue or resume business? You don't - you have each department conduct its own risk analysis and document what it needs to survive and resume. You have to be a coordinator, mentor, mother, and bully. You tell everyone what to do and when and how (in general terms) to do it. (Covello, 2006)

As you work with other departments, you must also conduct your own department's risk analysis and formulate a plan to cover any contingency. You must look objectively at your department's people, equipment, and procedures to see whether they are adequate to support your company in time of need. If not, identify and eliminate the shortcomings. If your people, equipment, and procedures are adequate, write your own departmental plan, review it, disseminate it, and, most importantly, test it with your staff. Bear in mind that you're doing this while continuing your day-to-day operation, which until this point you thought was a full-time job (Colvin, 2001).

Having received full cooperation from all the departments in your company, you have a desk full of rough-draft plans. What next? You schedule a series of meetings with all the ...