Commercial Emergency Plans

3/14/2023 (Permalink)

Having a shelter-in-place plan is necessary for any business.

If you manage a business or own a commercial space, you expect your employees to report to work per their schedule and fulfill their job duties in a timely manner. Your employees expect you to provide them with a safe environment in which to do their job. Most of the time, these expectations are met without incident. Every commercial space is vulnerable to risk, however, and it’s important to have plans in place to protect your staff when something out of the ordinary occurs.

Some regional risks for businesses in Southern Butler County include floods, tornadoes, and winter storms. Then, health hazards, vehicle or machinery accidents, acts of violence, and power outages or equipment failure are risks that should be included in every Emergency Response Plan no matter your geographical location. In certain emergency situations, evacuation is the safest course of action (scroll down for our previous post, Emergency Readiness: Evacuation Plans). In others—like in the instance of nearby chemical spills or a fire across the street—it’s safer for employees to remain in the building until emergency services say otherwise. For these situations, your business should have a Shelter-in-Place plan.

Shelter-in-Place plans need not be elaborate. To start creating one for your business, designate an area near the center of the building where employees can congregate; this area should be away from windows, and on the second or third floor if available. In the plan, a specific employee should be assigned to shut off the building’s air intake system. As with evacuation plans, your Shelter-in-Place plan should be triggered by an alarm or other alert system recognizable to your employees, and your staff should run practice drills no less than once a year.

Evacuation and Shelter-in-Place plans help keep your employees safe in the event of an emergency, and give them peace of mind all year round. Other ways to improve your business’s emergency preparedness include consulting local law enforcement in creating a Lockdown Plan (some departments even provide training) for our facility, and writing a Crisis Communication Plan, which lets your employees and your customers know exactly when and in what form they can expect contact from you about returning to work after a crisis.

SERVPRO of Southern Butler County specializes in emergencies!

Thank you for reading our blog post on Shelter-in-Place plans. If emergency strikes you call SERVPRO of Southern Butler County today! We are here to help. Call SERVPRO of Southern Butler immediately at 724-473-0745 and we can get to work immediately!