Posted By Ken Urquhart
Janet.
You have been given details of a useful publication which hopefully helps.
However from your posting, do I detect that your organisation does not have a procedure for such matters and that you as a person in the organisation are not aware/have not been informed about it?
Your comment that when you queried the action taken, you were informed that the organisation had followed procedures suggests these may exist but may not be communicated or clearly enough known about by presonnel.
Do you/does your organisation have procedures for Fire, First aid, Accident reporting etc,?
More importantly, do you and your colleagues know about these procedures and do you follow them?
As regards the Bomb Scare, perhaps your organisation, no matter how large or small needs to look at "An Emergency Procedure" which embraces the many aspects and forms that events can take these days.
In this day and age it is possible to have Bomb Scares as you put it in the form of suspicious packages, telephone threats or by the physical invasion of your organisations premises.
Groups of protesters or action groups, dependent upon your business and what activities it gets involved in can be targeted.
In the current arena with GM and Food issues or with Cosmetics and Pharmaceuticals testing, Animal Rights activists or Green Groups might target you.
For instance, Construction Companies have found there Head offices invaded by mob protesters because 200 miles away they are involved with a contract for building a new motorway through the countryside and a section of society wishes to protest against this.
You can now perhaps think of many other instances where such groups could intimidate and cause havoc, distress and personal unease at the workplace.
So companies need to consider all these posibilities and develop policies and procedures to address them.
Sit down and brainstorm - A WHAT IF approach.
Above all the organisation needs to clearly communicate the arrangements to all its people and ensure there ongoing training.
Also as the Home Ofice guide says the procedures should be regularly tested and drills and evacuation exercises held.
There outcomes should be reviewed and discussed and shortcomings and uplifts incorporated into revised Pocedures.
Then of course re-communicate and re-train.
Other events could be a vehicel accident outside your organisations premises on the public highway,or within your premises, the vehicle is carrying dangerous chemicals and is leaking. The fumes are a danger to people and you have to be evacuated away from the area.
Your organisations premises might be in an area liable to flooding. What are the emergency procedures should this occurr, in work hours, out of work hours and how would this type of occurrence affect you and colleagues, Do You Know?
A suspicious package is received in the mail, how do you or how does the organisation deal with it.
I hope these rambling thoughts give you some food for thought and perhaps encourage you to address the issues with the senior people, (Directors, Managers, colleagues, whoever and at whatever level you have access to) or Employee Safety Committes if you have such forums so that the business/organisation can consider the whole and wider issue of "EMERGENCY"
Regards.
Ken Urquhart