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3 Critical Steps to Prepare for a Workplace Emergency

Is your workplace ready to handle a crisis? When was the last time you reviewed your contingency plans? Do you have all the equipment needed for emergencies?
Companies and their employees can face many dangerous situations, like power outages, accidents, or natural disasters, and having a plan is crucial for the health and safety of everyone in and around the building and maintaining minimal downtime. Follow these three essential steps to ensure preparedness.

Identify Your Risks

Identifying the most likely hazards in your specific building to protect your unique business is vital to keeping everyone safe. By assessing risks ahead of time, you will be able to mitigate them.

Workplace Emergency - Hazardous Materials

Workplace Hazards / Hazardous Materials

Many industrial and warehouse environments have potential hazards everywhere. For example, necessary production supplies, such as heavy-duty machinery, power tools, and forklifts, can put people in harm’s way if not correctly handled, transported, or stored. Depending upon the environment, employees may even come into contact with flammable, poisonous, radioactive, or other hazardous materials

Walk each work area regularly to identify all potential hazards in each specific environment, ensure all equipment and materials are handled correctly, and make notes of any possible improvements.

Workplace Emergency - Fire

Fire

Fires are a very common workplace threat. Appliances, electrical wires, and space heaters are just a few examples of items that can lead to dangerous blazes in your place of business. Additionally, be sure to consider enhanced fire concerns if explosive, flammable, or combustible materials are manufactured, stored, transported, or disposed in your facilities. Regular fire safety training can also help reduce the likelihood of a fire.

Workplace Emergency - Power Outage

Power Outage

Have you considered what you will do if your power goes out? For example, are emergency exits marked clearly, even in the dark? Power outages can occur in any season, at any time, and for many reasons. Electricity is necessary to operate most business equipment, like computers, servers, and packaging machines. However, remember to consider indirect electricity use. For example, electric water pumps mean that water and other plumbing no longer operate as expected during a power outage.

Workplace Emergency - Severe Weather

Severe Weather

Severe weather can bring various hazards, including damaging wind, flooding, sleet, or hail. Consider that while your location may be more prone to certain types of severe weather, it is also essential to plan for events that occur less frequently in your area. For example, Dallas may not often receive snow, but the city comes to a halt when it does happen. Your team needs a contingency plan for all types of severe weather.

Workplace Emergency - Natural Disasters

Natural Disasters

Natural disasters, like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires, can have dramatic and apparent impacts on businesses. Do you have a plan to communicate important information to each of your employees? Do they know what that plan is? Worker safety and communication are critical before, during, and after these events. In extreme cases, offices may need to close or relocate temporarily.

Planning with a world map

Develop A Plan

When developing plans for each emergency don’t always need to be extremely specific. General evacuation and shelter-in-place plans can help you prepare for unexpected events. 

Once the plans have been developed, roll them out to your teams and regularly schedule drills to practice because people will more easily remember where to go and what to do when a real workplace emergency hits.

According to OSHA, at a minimum, an effective workplace emergency plan should include:

  • A method to report fires and other emergencies
  • An evacuation policy and procedure
  • Emergency escape procedures and routes, including floor plans, workplace maps, and safe areas
  • Names, titles, departments, and contact information of those who work within and outside the business to contact for details and explanation of duties and responsibilities under the plan
  • Procedures for employees who remain to perform or shut down critical operations, operate fire extinguishers, or perform other essential services before evacuating
  • Rescue and medical duties for designated workers

Planning Tip:
When planning for workplace emergencies, it’s easy to limit preparedness planning strictly to your facilities, but these same events can also impact your supply chain, distributors, and customers. Develop contingency plans to mitigate some of these effects in the event of an emergency.

Get Workplace Emergency Supplies Now

The best time to prepare for any emergency is now before it occurs. Every workplace and situation is different, but here are a few recommended supplies that come in handy for many of the emergency situations discussed above:

Next Steps

Get to it! Identify risks, develop plans, get supplies, and regularly review your preparedness for workplace emergencies. Additional information to help you prepare can be found at Ready.gov, maintained by the Department of Homeland Security.

Be sure to share this article with someone you know so they can be better prepared too.

Call ISC Sales today at (877) 602-0010 to get a free quote or ask about our industrial equipment lineup. You can also request a quote online here.

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