Choosing Emergency Notification Software for a Hybrid Workplace
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When choosing emergency notification software you want to ensure it has the tools and insights you need to take action and mitigate disruption. Read our blog to learn more about the key features of an emergency notification software, and how they can help businesses in a crisis.
What is emergency notification software?
Emergency notification software is an end-to-end solution that enables businesses to respond quickly to urgent situations to ease employee concerns, provide instruction, and avoid personal and business disruption.
WorkEQ's Crisis Alerting Message Creator
Hybrid workspaces change crisis management plans
In the past HR leaders could usually run the crisis response and risk mitigation with the assumption that most, if not all employees are at the office. In hybrid workspaces this assumption can no longer be made.
This can present significant challenges during a crisis. Why?
Consider the following situation. You have 100 employees who can work at your offices and a fire breaks our in one location. Immediately, someone is assigned the role of marking employees as safe. The fire department arrives. You are asked, "How many employees are at the office and who are they?"
My guess is that you don't want to be staring at a list of 100 contacts when you think about this question. You want to know the answer and not unnecessarily call or email every employee who might be at the office. This is a waste of time and has costs, especially in a dangerous and time sensitive situation.
An emergency notification system that keeps track of who will be at the office eliminates the pain of who to contact in the event of an on-site crisis.
Hybrid Work Dashboard 
Why choose digital tools for your crisis response?
How can you defend allocating the budget to crisis response software to key stakeholders?
A disaster can strike at any moment - from pandemics, to wars, to natural disasters. Communication is key to maintaining a healthy culture and ensuring employee wellness.
If that's not enough, here are three reasons why HR should have crisis management software.
1. Administration - Companies should consider an automated response to lessen the burden on HR teams, who are also experiencing burnout and exhaustion.
2. Time and Response - Crisis management requires a timely and coordinated response which can be done easily with digital tools. You could send emails to each department in your organization or isolate who lives in London and send them an alert. However, this manual process takes time that can’t be wasted for urgent communications. With software, HR can quickly identify impacted employees and send critical communications quickly.
3. Organizational Resilience – Automated tools allow companies to react and measure the outcomes of their crisis response. HR can utilize this information to iterate on their crisis readiness plans and build organizational resilience. According to an EIU survey for BSE, 88% of business executives surveyed believe resilience is a priority for their organizations, and 80% believe it is required for long-term growth.
If these reasons don’t satisfy your stakeholders, we encourage readers to learn more about the benefits of automating a crisis response.
Crisis Alerting Message Send Feature
What features should your Emergency Notification Software have?
To help you get started, we’ve put together a checklist that you can use to determine what is essential for you and your team.
|
Feature |
Description |
Check Yes or No |
|
Custom Reports |
Administrators can easily create a report segmenting employees by location, department, and other customizable criteria. |
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Mass Notifications |
Administrators can send email, push, or text notifications to their employees individually or groups as needed. Note: You can use this feature if a smaller group of employees have not responded to an urgent notification. Ex: A subset of employees have not marked themselves as “safe”. |
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|
Two-Way Communication |
Customize check-in questions to ensure that employees are safe. |
|
|
Ability to create separate views and groups |
Managers only have access to view the data and status of their employees to protect privacy |
|
|
Security and Privacy Infrastructure |
The solution safeguards employee privacy and follows security measures to protect users’ private information. |
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|
Risk Monitoring Tools |
Administrators can monitor and immediately respond to risk at their organization. |
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Risk Management Tools |
There are tools in place to assess and measure risk mitigation. |
If any features noted above are not mentioned, it is important to consider whether the software solution can be customized for your organization’s use case. Some providers may be willing to iterate on their solution to help you and your company achieve the best outcomes. If you’re looking for a solution that evolves with your organization and goes beyond a standard one-size-fits-all approach, we recommend evaluating enterprise grade solutions. Click here to learn more about our Crisis Communications solution.
Now, are you ready to take this checklist and evaluate solutions? Get started, and meet with our team of experts who have years of experience helping enterprise companies manage crises. Click here to schedule a session!