Emergency communications systems need to be easy to use during a time of crisis. When a crisis or disaster occurs, people aren’t focusing on communications technology – they’re focusing on their own role and safety. That’s only human. Even in business, we don’t practice for emergencies very often.
Most businesses have fire drills a few times a year and that’s it. A few other organizations might mix in a tornado drill or an active shooter drill if it applies. Businesses tend not to invest much time in disaster preparedness. If they do, they focus on the technological or IT side (i.e. cybersecurity), not the personnel side. If a crisis does happen, they find themselves surprised that most employees don’t know what to do. That can create a crunch on management, and if they don’t have instruction, that crunch goes on up to executives. This can put people at risk during an emergency, or simply paralyze a business at a crisis moment. This is the exact moment when organizations needs to be most responsive and adaptable to changing situations.
This is why emergency communications systems need to be easy enough for laypeople to use. No one’s training with this system year-round, or even regularly, because organizations don’t invest time in something they hope not to have to use. Inevitably it will be used, though, which means we need to boil down advanced crisis management actions into accessible tools.
These are the twin goals of an effective and efficient crisis management set up. The system needs to be up-to-date in its capabilities while also being easy to grasp and master.
This is why it’s key for organizations to ask questions when installing and customizing an emergency communications system. Let us know your needs and we can customize the tools so that they give you the most complete response for the simplest input.
Too many businesses simply shove an emergency management system in without taking advantage of its customization. You don’t want to be stuck reading how to work it in a crisis – you want it to be an easy extension of your ability to manage. That can be done, but only if we know all your needs and how we can meet them.