When it comes to an emergency situation, no matter how prepared a company, an institution, or an entire industry, there can never exist an agreed-upon or consensual prediction related to the outcomes. Yet with the technological advancements such as modern emergency mass notification systems, and alongside companies’ understanding of the damages that can results from not tending properly to a crisis, there are a lot of things you can do for reducing risks. Therefore, when talking about how to best handle a crisis, one must always base all plans and strategies on methodically studied metrics. Having everything at hand – from teams and exhaustive reports, to crisis communication solutions will give you the advantage you need in dealing with an emergency, and allow you to assure business continuity.
People often think of emergencies as something that happens due to a natural disaster or a manmade catastrophe, and although it’s true that in a year there can be around 330 natural disasters worldwide, a crisis can also occur due to other causes. Things like cyberattacks, equipment malfunctions, internal network errors, or even an improperly executed strategy can lead to a crisis situation. Therefore, companies and institutions need to be fully prepared to manage all emergencies in an efficient manner, which is why emergency plans and strategies play such an important role.
What Are Emergency Management Metrics?
Emergency metrics are the factors you need to consider when drafting your plans, implementing your strategies, and appointing professionals responsible with your crisis management. As we mentioned, emergency and crisis situations are varied, they differ from industry to industry, and can be influenced by a wide range of elements. However, the common constituent is that you cannot avoid the terrible effects of a crisis unless you prepare in advance for it, especially in terms of crisis communication and what it means to inform the people involved at all times.
Types of Emergency Metrics:
Emergency Preparedness Metrics – Metrics that measure all the aspects of what it means to be ready for a crisis such as the number of organizational departments in charge of emergencies, amount and variations of crisis communication plans, the number of preparedness initiatives, and other figures including number of stakeholders in leadership, number of trainings, or facilities.
Emergency Response Metrics – Once you have all your planning in order, response metrics will help you measure how well you have implemented those plans, in all areas and aspects of your business
Emergency Recovery Metrics – These metrics are related to the recovery process, how you implement your business continuity plans, and the ability to measure how your business is able to return to its normal state once the crisis has passed
Today we are going to focus on emergency response metrics and talk about what the most important ones are, and why you need to always consider them when it comes to your emergency plans and crisis strategies.
Top 10 Emergency Response Management Metrics
Whether we are talking about technical practicability, timing, implementation of strategies, personnel, or communication, emergency response management metrics are of utmost importance for the outcomes of a crisis. Assuring business continuity and reducing downtime are the two most important aspects depending on your emergency response metrics.
1. Technical Protocols
The technical aspects of your business and its emergency strategies are highly important when it comes to assessing the manner in which you are dealing with a crisis. Technical protocol metrics involve figures such the number of cybersecurity strategies, the size of your technical team, or the number of devices you are using for implementing your emergency response plans and storing your data.
2. Regular Checkups
Conducing regular checkups of all your emergency response plans and strategies is an excellent way of obtaining useful metrics for knowing whether you are successful in your endeavors. Make sure to gather and analyze the figures of all your regular checkup, and amend your plans accordingly.
3. The Use of an Emergency Mass Notification System
An emergency mass notification system can make the difference between successfully broadcasting messages and alerts in times of a crisis, and having to manually inform the people involved, thus significantly increasing delivery time. Using a modern, fully-featured mass notification system will allow you to send messages to a large group of people, have templates in place for a wide range of crisis situations, and analyze real-time feedback.
4. Number of Maintenance Procedures
Maintenance is not something reserved strictly to industries in which companies operate heavy machinery or have a lot of equipment engaged in their production process. You can be a company offering nothing but services and still need to conduct maintenance procedures on your premises. The number of maintenance procedures you are executing is an excellent emergency response management metric as it tells you how to further proceed in case of a malfunction.
5. Emergency Response Training
The training of all your employees is amongst the most important emergency response metrics as it not only provides you with insights into how prepared you are to respond with efficiency to a crisis, but it also offers your personnel assurance. Knowing that they have all the proper knowledge and the information related to all persons and teams responsible of emergencies will create a better working environment.
6. Incident Templates and Scenarios
The number of templates and scenarios you consider for your emergency response is a valuable figure. This allows your company to quickly respond to a wide range of situations without having to waste time on coming up with a message for broadcasting. Whether we are talking about regular messages related to maintenance or short alerts in times of need, having a set of templates at hand and being aware of their performance will significantly reduce downtime.
7. First Responders Time
It is not sufficient to provide your team of first responders with drafted plans and crisis communication strategies to implement in the event of an emergency, you will also need to monitor their time. Using first responders time as an emergency response metric will help you further improve your crisis communication plans and emergency strategies. This will therefore contribute to the overall success of your business.
8. Emergency Response Messages and Alerts
The number of emergency response messages and alerts you are sending, either from a template or the ones you are drafting in real-time should be analyzed so that you have a better understanding of how your crisis communication solutions operate. If you have a precise situation of these messages, you can recheck them and see if some of the messages and alerts you are sending in real-time might be transformed into templates in order to save time.
9. The Number of Employees or Teams Engaged with Emergency Response
Regardless of the size or sector of your business, you will need to delegate emergency response attributes to either a number of employees or an entire team. Knowing the exact situation and how many employees you have in service of emergency response contributes to the security of your emergency plans and strategies.
10. Stakeholders Included in The Crisis Communication Strategies
Aside from templates and solutions to inform employees of a crisis situation, a company’s crisis communication strategies must also include a plan for informing stakeholders of how a situation is evolving. The number of those stakeholders is an emergency response metric that will help you be aware of how your company’s response time, as you can gather feedback and improve your strategies, if needed.
These top 10 emergency response management metrics will provide you with the tools and figure you need to properly draft and implement an emergency response strategy that is not only highly-effective, but also tailored to your needs. Make sure you are keeping your company’s goals and objectives in mind, and certain specifics of your industry, along with industry regulators for emergency situations. Also, don’t forget to keep your crisis communication strategies up-to-date with the latest technologies and have them developed with the help of modern-day solutions that offer you access to a wide range of features.
