Emergency Notification Systems and Crisis Communication – Blog

During the month of October, we celebrate Crime Prevention Month with the National Crime Prevention Council (CPC). No matter your age, your walk of life, or the industry you’re involved, we should all be working together to help prevent crime wherever and whenever possible. Awareness and preparation are so important when it comes to protecting yourself and the people around you. Crime prevention is about keeping everyone safe. As the CPC says, “It helps ensure individuals live up to their potential no matter their way of life or where they live. It’s all about helping people keep themselves, their families, and their communities safe from crime.” 

You’ve taken the first step by adopting a mass notification system that’s designed for you to help keep your people safe and informed of emergencies. Aligning your system with your emergency response and action plan is next on the list. As September is National Preparedness Month, it’s a great time to reflect and exercise your organization’s ability to notify, respond, and recover in a critical or emergency situation.  Now is the time to test your emergency or mass notification system.

We’ve been seeing an increase in violence throughout the United States over the last decade. These acts of violence are happening everywhere. We’ve seen these incidents in schools, places of worship, and places of work. These are all places we go expecting to be safe from harm or injury. If there is an emergency, we expect to be notified along with what procedures we should take to stay out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, occurrences of workplace violence are increasing. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), each year there are 2 million reports of workers having been a victim of workplace violence. That’s excluding those who didn’t report their incident occurring.

Proper disaster and crisis preparedness is about much more than giving your organization and emergency officials the tools they need to successfully handle an emergency. It’s about ensuring that you have as much prepared ahead of time so that when an emergency does happen, you know what actions need to be taken, notifications need to be sent out, and what guidance should be provided. Although often assumed, having the procedures and means to instantly contact the police and local EMS is an important part of the preparation process. Developing relationships with local first responders and including them in the development and exercise of your emergency response and action plan is a most important step in preparedness.

It’s that time of the year again when universities, colleges, and K-12 schools open up their doors for their students and staff. With students coming back, the safety of everyone on campus is a big issue. Emergency communication is more important than ever on any campus. The goal of any organization is to ensure that your mass notification reaches every person through multiple routes. This is especially important when there are children or students involved. There’s never a 100% chance that someone has their mobile phone on them at all times, so you must use other methods to reach your people. In the world of IoT, this multimodal approach is increasingly easy to implement and initiate.

Safety isn’t simply a state of being. Safety is a way of life and a goal that each of us strives to reach. Not only for us, but also for our families, schools, and the organizations we work. To be legally compliant, organizations must create an emergency response and action plan for their organization. It is their responsibility to be prepared for emergency scenarios that could possibly happen to their organization - and notify their constituents. In this day, we all expect to be notified should an emergency occur.