International Disaster Preparedness: Ensuring Workplace Safety in a Crisis
What a month that was!
Since writing Arinite’s October International Blog:
· Thousands of people died in the Gaza conflict between Hamas and Israel.
· Storms Babet and Ciarán wrought death and destruction across the UK.
· 2 Swedish football fans were shot by a terrorist in Brussels.
· Mass shooting at a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, left 18 dead and 13 wounded.
· A magnitude-5.7 earthquake in Nepal killed more than 150.
· A magnitude-6.3 earthquake near Herat, Afghanistan killed more than 2,000 and rendered thousands homeless.
· Both sides in the Special Military Operation claimed progress in Ukraine, with ever-mounting casualties, and threats of escalation into nuclear war.
Expect the unexpected
For decades, I have been asking managers what would be the impact if they turned up at work to discover their building a smouldering crater in the ground?
Perhaps I was being over-simplistic then as it strikes me now that there are many more insidious hazards, especially in these days of just-in-time delivery, such as:
· What if your business suffered a cyber-security hack, or other data loss?
· What if another pandemic struck?
· What if there were a shortage of delivery drivers, or they took industrial action, or were blocked by protestors?
· What if there’s a prolonged energy black-out?
· What if a “security incident” blocks your approach road?
· What if a volcanic blow-out or other natural disaster grounds all airline flights?
· What if there is a big fire or explosion on a neighbouring site?
· What if a key supplier can no longer supply?
· How much damage could a disaffected employee do?
· Could failure of a single piece of hardware or software create a critical bottleneck?
· What if your staff were unable (or unwilling) to come into work because of dealing with the effects of said disaster at home?
It’s comforting and very human to shrug and say: “It’s never happened before…” - but what if?
More than 40% of businesses that suffer a disaster, never recover – no matter how much insurance they carry. Source Forbes Oct 12, 2021.
If your business suffers an interruption – even if only for a short time - your customers may make sympathetic noises – but won’t remain loyal for very long.
They have their own businesses to run and will quickly jump ship to one of your competitors.
Once you are back up and running again, it may be hard to gain customers back, through having built up inertia, trust, and comfort in their new supplier.
Ensuring Workplace Safety in a Crisis
Contingency planning is a whole specialist area in its own right, so we can only scratch the surface of what needs doing in this blog, but essentially you need to:
· Identify what and how things might go wrong.
· Understand the worst-case scenario if things go wrong.
· Devise plans to cope with the threats.
· Put in place strategies to assess and minimise risks before they happen.
· Are your staff OK?
Desktop exercises
Bring in a firm of specialist facilitators who will walk your managers through a half-day desktop exercise.
They will ask you to think the unthinkable by laying out the scenario, ensure the safety of anyone exposed to the “disaster”, agree responsibilities, prioritise tasks and help you restore critical business functions.
Of course, prevention is much better than cure, so do keep your emergency plans up to date – and test these too from time to time. Check out Arinite’s webpage on Emergency Preparedness for further advice.
Arinite can help.
Contact us
Arinite clients worldwide appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment.
Our team of health and safety consultants take pride in keeping health and safety simple.
If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call our
office +44 207 947 9581, or type an enquiry to: https://www.arinite.com/contact-us/.
Written by