Do You Have an Emergency Plan for Your Business?

As a business owner, it's important to ensure that you and your staff are prepared to handle different emergency scenarios. 

Does your staff know what to do in the event of a medical emergency? Do you have a plan for what to do when the power goes out? Or what about how to handle extraneous events that are out of your control?

By developing a detailed emergency plan, you can better prepare yourself and your staff, protect your customers, and protect your business. 

Do You Have an Emergency Plan for Your Business?

Whether you’re just getting started or are looking for some additional ideas to add to your Company Emergency Plan, here are a few areas and emergencies to consider:

Medical

• Choking
• Physical injury
• Heart attack
• Other

Safety

• Need to evacuate
• Natural disaster

Technology

• Power goes out
• WiFi connection issues
• Other technology connectivity issues or outages

Be sure to consider all of the possibilities, and include insights from your personal experiences. Use our template below to get started on building your emergency plan.

Emergency Plan Template

Answer the questions below and use your answers to build an emergency plan for your business. Be sure to create different plans for different emergency scenarios.

1. List the type of emergency.
2. How can your business prevent, avoid, or mitigate the impact of this emergency?
   1. Prevention is the first step of emergency planning. Think about whether there's anything you can do to avoid this emergency scenario. For instance, if the emergency type is "power outage", maybe you should invest in a backup generator? Or, always make sure that you have "power outage survival kits" that include external batteries and phone charger cords, flashlights, and snacks for customers to deter them from immediately leaving the facility.
3. What steps should your team take during an emergency?
   1. For each emergency type, be sure to create a detailed list of steps you'd like your staff to take to quickly respond to the emergency. For instance, if the emergency type is "health and safety", maybe you should consider training your team in basic first-aid or CPR, or, teach them how to create an incident report or what emergency contacts to call immediately.
4. Create a post-emergency procedure.
   1. Make sure that you also create a post-emergency procedure for your staff to follow. Perhaps you may want an internal incident report to be filled out by one of your staff after the emergency. Or, you may want to make sure that you gather for a quick debrief before everyone disperses. Whatever it is, have a process in place. 
5. Additional resources.
   1. Be sure to include any additional resources that your team might need. Any important phone numbers, forms, or templates!

Add this information into your company playbook and require that each staff member read it as part of onboarding!

Leave a Comment, We'd Love to Hear Your Thoughts!

What did you think about the emergency preparedness template in this post? Let us know in the comments below!

Download Our Emergency Preparedness Guide

Get it here​ or click on the image below to download our emergency preparedness guide. In it, we provide detailed examples of different emergency scenarios and suggestions on what to do to handle them!