In the event of a serious emergency, there may be
areas of the building that are more likely to be
In the event of a sudden, catastrophic event,
you may have just minutes to gather your
family and get out of your house—possibly for
good. What would you take? Where would you
go? Planning ahead for the worst can help
minimize the impact of a tragedy and may
even save lives. This five-step plan can help
get you and your family on the road to safety.
Setting Expectations
 
The key to creating and maintaining an effective
emergency plan begins with knowing exactly what
you want. It is important to know the necessary
timeframe for a successful evacuation, and where
employees are expected to go during the
emergency. The ‘where’ and ‘evacuation time’ are
the most important expectations to get in order.
These must be based on the risks of your company
in particular. You cannot properly institute risk
prevention policies without being aware of the
potential risks you face.
 
during an emergency is often due to excessively
rigid evacuation plans. That rigidity can make all the
compromised than others: rooms containing highly
flammable substances, areas with obstructions, etc.
This means that these parts of the building should
be avoided during an evacuation. In the case of the
storage of combustible or other potentially harmful
materials, an evacuation point should be a safe
distance away from these areas.
How long you have to evacuate will mainly be
dependent on the types of risks your company
faces. Always plan for the timeframe of the
emergency that has the shortest time allotted for
evacuation. That way you can evacuate fast enough
to protect your employees no matter what
happens.
 
Alternative Evacuation
 
We all know the saying about best-laid plans, and
how they often go awry. An emergency evacuation
plan should take this into account most of all. As
much as you can try to expect the unexpected,
there are always complications. People can panic
and create unanticipated problems for even the
best plans. Similarly, safety measures you planned
to rely on could fail in the moment. That is why a
truly effective evacuation strategy is somewhat
fluid. A comprehensive workplace safety
model will take all these factors into account, in
order to craft a seamless emergency evacuation
strategy.
 
There should never be one available exit path or
one relied upon rendezvous point. These are just
not reliable enough to stake the well-being of all
your employees on. The confusion that can ensue
preparation worthless. That is why training and
planning must be dynamic. In these extreme and
unpredictable situations being able to account for
employees is a must. At the end of the day, it is
about making sure everyone is safe.
 
Practice
An emergency plan is not complete without a plan
of how to teach it and train people to use it. And far
too often practice breeds complacency. Employees
and even employers begin to simply go through the
motions of drills and training. I believe that all
forms of practice must be somewhat
confrontational in order to be effective. This is not
to say that these drills and planning sessions should
be disrespectful, but they should challenge
employees. The expectations that you have set
should be maintained, and there should be
experimentation with alternative evacuations.
 
One of the best methods of practice is to simply ask
employees about the evacuation plan. When they
propose a way of exiting the building, have a
probable means of denying it. They say, “I would
use the emergency exit at the end of the hall.” You
respond, “The roof over that exit has caved in.
What do you do?” This shakes people out of
complacency. They are no longer being led or
relying solely on what they already know.
 
This kind of confrontational preparation gets the
mind working in the ways needed to solve
problems during the high stress of an emergency.
Also, businesses can incentivize their employees to
encourage more participation in the safety
program. Furthermore, rigorous practice helps
highlight workplace risks that come in handy during
a workplace risk assessment.
 
The Safety Mindset
 
There is a cost to safety. It takes both an
investment of time and money to create the most
effective plans. You will need to set aside time
to train employees on safety procedures and
the proper way evacuate. And training, drills, and
other forms of practice must be ongoing to assure
the effectiveness of the overall safety strategy. The
company will also need to have effective safety and
security technology.
As mentioned above, tracking your employees is
invaluable for evacuation planning. Not only will
you be able to know that everyone made it out, in
the worst case scenario you will be able to point
emergency responders in the right direction. It is
also important to have the physical safety and
security devices in the building working effectively.
 Doors and locks are especially important, as into this preparedness will determine how safe
malfunctions of this type can lead to lockouts,
trapping employees during an emergency. Sticking
doors, locks that are not turning smoothly, etc.,
should be seen as red flags. Most of the time
security professionals can salvage this type of
security hardware with maintenance, but you must
always be willing to invest in installing new
commercial locks. There are a good selection of
warehouse locks that can be used to bolster
your warehouse security and keep your
emergency evacuation plan well rounded.
Whenever something is not working, you cannot
shy away from the cost of safety.
Final Thoughts
To have an effective emergency plan, you need to
know what you are looking to accomplish. Where
people are evacuating to, and how fast they need
to get there. There must be room for things to
change without causing a catastrophic breakdown your employees and company are.
in the plan. This comes from dynamic and
confrontational practice methods. And at the end
of the day, the willingness to invest the resources
Evacuati
on Plan