This is a recorded presentation from Bill Hammond, owner of HRFE Consulting about how to make sure your employees are aware of your disaster plan and when its time to take action.
Here’s the transcript for this video:
Ryan: All right, so Bill, I am going to allow the ability for you to share your screen and here to share with us today How to Share Your Disaster Plan with Your Employees.
Bill: I hope everyone can see that Word document. Good, so everything, it worked great Ryan, everything went fine.
Bill: Uh, before I get started with the emergency training and kind of go into what you should talk to employees about.
Bill: First thing I would recommend, and I think most insurance carriers. For business insurance and anybody who’s put together these, these emergency training programs, really encourage employers if you have employees and if you have a brick-and-mortar building, no matter what the size to contact the local first responders, as well as the police, law enforcement.
Bill: And invite them to come in and give them, you know, a map or a drawing of your building. Take them for a little walk through so at least they know, if they have to enter the building, whether it’s in a fire or it’s in the case of law enforcement, might be with an active shooter.
Bill: They know what to expect inside the building because they’ve been there and kind of know where the employees work, where the lunchroom is at, where things are stored, just a lot of information can be given to them on a map that they, that you give them, and that’s what I always did. I gave them a map.
Bill: They made their own notes for their, for what they needed, but they knew where the utility cut offs were at. They knew where, where all the hazardous materials were stored, especially anything that could go boom and that’s the first step, because that bringing in the professionals like that and you’re walking them through the building, it helps when you start the training on, on being prepared for disasters.
Bill: This, what I’m going to talk about it, it’s strictly from OSHA. It’s the general industry standard.
Bill: OSHA has also a construction industry standard, and they also have and, and there are other agencies that have their own emergency action plans and information. But I’m going to stick strictly with the general industry because that’s probably covers 95% of all the industries here in the United States. If you got something specific, you’ll get in touch with me and I can get you going from that direction.
Bill: So, let’s just start with, with the application in 1910. A standard.
Bill: First of all, OSHA does cover any employer that has an, an employee, even just one employee, there is that OSHA will have. You know? You’ll have, you’ll have OSHA responsibilities.
Bill: So, what it says here right away is you’ve have, every employer has to have an emergency action plan. And the OSHA requires that plan be written and oral, especially if you have more than 10 employees.
Bill: So, you have to have a written plan. It has to be available to employees now. You can do that. In today’s world, a lot of it can be done with the company like Intranet, internal where they will post up news, you know, newsletters things like this. They can put this information on there, that’s perfectly acceptable.
Bill: When I was doing it, we had to basically distribute the plan. Come to all the managers and supervisors and place those books in places where employees would be able to access the written one as well as use that written plan to do any oral communication with employees.
Bill: The only exception to a written plan is small employers with fewer than with 10 or less employees. All you have to do is do an oral plan and walk the employees through it anytime you’re doing any training, any training at all.
Bill: This is off of what we’re talking about. Uhm, always have a sign-up sheet. And always create a little quiz that the employees have to answer no more than like 5 little true or true and false questions that will become very important, especially if there’s ever a situation where say an employee is injured or killed.
Bill: OSHA is going to want to see that you’re, that you did these, this emergency action plan? They’re going to question you on it. You’ve got to provide that information that that employee was there, and they also answered those questions.
Bill: So, with that said. Whoops, come on move.
Bill: Basically, you’re going to just have some emergency, minimum emergency action plan. This is what OSHA requires. You can go beyond that matter of fact, you’re encouraged to do that. Lots of times your insurance carrier will have a plan, all of that, or if you want Google, you can go to the SBA they have plans for small business or any size business to use on the SBA for disaster of all types, fire, hurricane, tornado, snow, flood. Cyber security as well as. The active shooter situation.
Bill: So, you’re going to have procedures for reporting a fire, and I’m just going to talk about fire. You can have procedures for other emergencies, but let’s just talk about fire.
Bill: First of all, when you go into the training, you’re going to train the employees on what they should expect, what, what is going to be required of them.
Bill: First thing that’s going to be required of them is, doggone it, get out of the building, don’t, don’t wait around, don’t look around if the fire alarm goes off. The first thing is get out of the building.
Bill: I, I never wanted my employees to pick up a fire extinguisher and try to do anything, although they were trained, some of them were trained to do that, because we did a lot of what’s called hot work in the plants that I was at and that hot work tends to create sparks and so forth.
Bill: And, and you need to have a fire extinguisher there any way to just, you know, knock down any of those, that situation, but none of them are trained to really, you know, fight a fire. So, you want them out of the building and you only want them to use the fire extinguisher to make sure they can make a good, clean, quick escape.
Bill: Just recently in Plainfield, we of course had that Walmart warehouse building and the fire department talked about how effective the fire suppression system in that building was and they really said that the fire suppression system is what helped all those employees, 1000 employees, get out and that was a sprinkler system. I’m sure there were some other things too.
Bill: The employees that I remember the news media talking to at first were kind of weren’t sure when the alarm went off. But then they saw the smoke and also the steam, and they knew it wasn’t a drill.
Bill: And they all did what they had to do, they were trained on, so, what you’re trained on is evacuation and how to get out.
Bill: That’s why when you go to a hotel or you go to the Convention Center, downtown or any large building where there’s lots of people, you’re going to see maps in certain locations that tell you the quickest way to get out of the building in case of a fire, where’s the nearest emergency exit? That’s what you have to do.
Bill: Also, in these emergency plans, and those are all hung up in various places and the employees are trained on. First of all, the primary evacuation route, and then you train them on the secondary evacuation route in case the first escape point is not available.
Bill: Then you go and you’re in your training, you are training them after they’ve, you know, getting out of the building. They all have to go to a what’s called a rally point.
Bill: And, and people ask me, and employees ask me a lot, just, why do we have to go there? Why can’t we just get in our car and go home?
Bill: Well, here’s the reason why. Once that you know, I’m, in my time, I was the, I guess you might say, the, the emergency coordinator and I had to have all of my supervisors. They reported to me and managers, and they told me that all employees were accounted for.
Bill: If you’ll go back to where the Plainfield fire the Walmart fire, the employees, there are a couple employees that were interviewed and they said they were at a rallying point and when they were training, they had to do the same thing.
Bill: The supervisors made a count of every employee and reported that every employee was out of the building. Without that piece of information, I have to then go to the fire department and if I can’t account for an employee, I’m telling the fire department there is still an employee or employees in the building.
Bill: That’s why they can’t leave. They have to get to that rally point. So that the, so they can all be counted and accounted for so that we don’t have to send anybody in there. And just let the fire department do what they have to do, which is fight the fire and set up the defensive perimeter that they have to do.
Bill: That’s the main reason why, that is the biggest reason why employers tell employees, do not get in your cars. Do not leave the premises until we do a head count and we give permission for you to leave.
Bill: Once the decisions made that hey, you’re not going to go back to work today. So, that’s, that’s really important, you have to drive that home to the employees.
Bill: And then also at that point, the supervisors that make the account are also going to tell me if anybody was injured so we can make sure they get the medical treatment they need, whether that’s putting them in an ambulance that’s on site and having the EMTs or paramedics treat them.
Bill: Whether it’s taking them to the hospital or whether we make an appointment to send them to our company doctor to get them checked out to make sure they’re, they’re OK.
Bill: Now, after all of that’s done and it’s kind of settled down, you always have a list of critical employees that you’ve created. And mostly it’s your maintenance department. Couple of your senior maintenance people that are going to help you, kind of, shut down critical plant operations that maybe the fire department has not cut off or had, had the utility companies cut off, just depending, but those are folks that are the ones that would be allowed back into the plant within certain circumstances, depending what the fire department says to help you secure the plant or the OR, the office.
Bill: Once all of that is kind of decided, you’re basically at a point, where you’re done with your plan.
Bill: You just now or in a mode of OK, you’re going to be assisting your employees, so, some employees they’ll have left their cell phones in the plant. They won’t have him with them.
Bill: You’re going to set up with some supervisors or myself, hopefully you know, normally the managers have the cell phone or something on their on their belt, and you’re going to start making sure that people can be, can get ahold of their families. Let them know that they’re all safe, secure, if anybody sent to the hospital or medical facilities, you know, we’re going to let their, their family know so they know where they were sent, what hospital, what doctor’s office.
Bill: There’s a whole procedure for securing the property so that if any vehicles are left there, they’re all protected so that they, employees don’t lose the, that that piece of property because they may have lost other, other stuff inside the plant that went up in smoke.
Bill: These are all things that you’ve you’re going to be training the employees, not only on, just you know, one time but minimally twice a year. And encouraging your supervisors to train at least on, How to get out of that department or that area of the plant? What’s the quickest you know evacuation point?
Bill: Just keep reminding them over and over again. They, a lot of the employees, hated that, I mean. They just, you know, I shouldn’t, hate’s too strong of a word. Let’s just put it this way. Sometimes they zoned out and you had to keep after, after it. Over and over again, repeating it like, you know, just like a broken record.
Bill: That’s why you also have to make sure that you have a sign-up sheet, that every time you do a meeting, the employees sign that they were in attendance and what the purpose of the meeting was for.
Bill: Some of them you won’t have that little quiz, but the majority of them you will have at least a little quiz to make sure that they were paying attention. And that all gets sent to my department human resources and we put that all together in our employee training file.
Bill: So that if there’s a question, we could handle that both internally or, or externally, if there’s an audit about, you know what we do and how the employees are orally informed about the, the process.
Bill: You can, going back to where I talked about fire extinguishers, I did for employees that wanted it. We had a special training day. We either had the fire to, somebody from the fire department that we paid, or else we had our fire extinguisher company come in and we just, we’ll train employees on using the fire extinguisher both for in the plant, you know in the office, in the plant and it also transferred over to their home.
Bill: And just to show them how to attack a small blaze. And to put it out. And then just quickly call 911 and all of that can be done kind of at the same time it was a lot of fun employees. That was the one thing employees loved to do. Loved making a mess out in the parking lot, they thought that was really great.
Bill: When they got to blow up all these fire extinguishers, blow all that lot, white liquid and powder and smoke all, all over the building, all over the parking lot where we had little gas fires that were started up with, with back, you know, gasoline fires and yeah, the guys and the gals all had a lot of fun, but while we did that training to give them some, you know some experience at the end of it they were all told, you’re not a firefighter.
Bill: If there is a fire in the plant in the office, your job is not to go running for a fire extinguisher unless it’s absolutely needed. The first thing is, get out of the building. Once the alarm goes off, get out of the building.
Bill: And that was probably the most impressive thing about the Walmart fire was that the employees were done. So within the planning and the training, one of the important one of the other things that you’ve got to do is you got to decide what kind of alarm system, you’re going to do is the alarm system and what it sounds like in the plant.
Bill: Everybody has different alarms. I can’t tell you what, you know, what one will sound like, but I always would activate our system, probably about once a quarter, just so employees knew the sound of the fire alarm bell or buzzer.
Bill: And then also had a process by which we made an announcement over the PA system so we could cover a lot of bases. And, uhm, make sure they understood what, what the, the fire alarm bell sounded like, what the severe weather alarm warning was, sounded like, or anything else that was needed.
Bill: That, those were the two that we mainly trained on here in Indiana. What you have, and I think the other thing that you want to make sure, is that new employees are trained. Employees that are transferred to a different department.
Bill: But the biggest thing is you always want to try to get a senior employee that’s very willing, get a little extra training that he’s the person that kind of rounds up and grabs that new employee and helps get them out along with the supervisor.
Bill: You don’t want anybody to be, you know, think they’re the King of the Roost, but you want somebody to be able to say, you know, this is not a drill. Let’s get out and start the process.
Bill: The only other thing that OSHA requires that every plan does, is anytime you run a drill, you’re always wanting to have the opinion of not only the supervisors, but employees. What worked? What didn’t work?
Bill: If they didn’t hear the, the buzzer, the fire alarm bell, why didn’t they hear it? What prevented that?
Bill: I worked at one plant that we had five hearing impaired employees, so, what we had to do for those, actually, we had to create almost like, you know, a red light. Just like you see on a fire truck or a, you know, police car something, that would catch their attention as well as an employee that worked with them to basically grab them and get them out of the building because they couldn’t hear and obviously couldn’t hear the fire alarm bell.
Bill: And then anytime you did any remodeling to your building, change something, added new equipment, which would, make might change the evacuation plan or anything of that sort always had to go back through and make those adjustments to the plan and then retrain.
Bill: This is not something that was, you know, just done once or twice. This was constant on and on. That’s the only reason why 1000 people in that Walmart Fire got out safely because they were trained on it multiple times. And it was expected by the management group that everybody knew what to do and where to go.
Bill: And they weren’t taking any excuses, if you didn’t understand it, you were retrained, ran through it again.
Bill: Uh, individually, if it had to be, and I’d done that with, with employees individually, this is what you do. Made it very clear if they didn’t follow the instructions, not only was their life on the line as well as the lives of other employees, but quite frankly their job was on the line.
Bill: Never terminated anybody because they didn’t take it seriously or work with us, but if that had happened I, I would have, would have been, you know, it would have been a, you know, termination due to safety violations which, y ou can, you know, I’ve done that for others, but I never had to do one for emergency training.
Bill: Most employees took it kind of seriously, as long as, you know management took it seriously, but we did it. We wanted employees out of the building. We didn’t want them pretending to be firefighters.
Bill: It’s just too dangerous.
Bill: I think what, if all of you will remember, even the Fire Chief for Plainfield said that while the fire suppression system worked, the fire in that building overcame it and took off. And that’s why there was such destruction to that building was because the fire for whatever, whatever started it, it overcame the, the sprinkler system and overcame other suppression systems that Walmart may have had.
Bill: And just, that’s why it burned for 24 hours. The fire department just, because first of all, there was lack of water out there afte,r after a lot have been drained out of the system but the, the fire suppression system did only, did one good thing, it gave the employees time to get out of the building.
Bill: And the management to make a good head count.
Bill: So that they knew all thousand employees were out, and by that time when the fire department, even though they were, got there within less than five minutes, that building was gone. It was it was already going to be a total loss.
Bill: So, the training worked. The required training worked. The fire suppression system worked. They launched everything that I just I went through, that you train your employees on, works. That’s the great example.
Bill: I kind of, in some respects, wish I was still doing that, that kind of stuff. I would, would have, all of those videos from the news media that I’d be playing to employees that, that they don’t want to take what we’re talking about seriously. So, with that I’ll sign up, stop talking and I guess if there’s any questions, I’ll take those and go from there. Ryan, it’s back to you.
Ryan: Yeah Bill, you brought up a really good point in your presentation about accommodating for disability compliance.
Ryan: So, like hearing impaired employees, what are some of the other accommodations that business owners need to think about when prepping their disaster plan?
Bill: Well, you’re going to have to think about and I brought up the, the hearing impaired people because that was one I you know we came up with, but anybody who is, has any impairment.: 00:25:36: So, let’s, let’s just talk about, you know, you may hire an employee that’s in a wheelchair. You’re going to have to provide some method or means for that person to get out, even if the wheelchair is non powered or powered. Most, most of day today, most of them will be powered wheelchairs
Bill: Anybody who’s you know using a Walker or a cane? You know those are all things you’re going to have to take into consideration as far as where that employee is located and especially if you happen to have a 2nd floor or a mezzanine level, you’re going to have to be aware of that because in a fire you don’t want to use an elevator or a lift.
Bill: So, you may have to purchase special, uhm, personnel carrier devices and train a couple of employees, to handle those to help the employee get out, especially if it has, they get out have to get out before the fire department can get in there and help you.
Bill: Uh, so you yeah, you gotta take all those into, into account every, every situation and what we did or what I did was I contacted the well, The Indiana School for the Deaf, and asked them what was the best, best method for people who are hearing impaired that could not hear a, a fire alarm.
Bill: And they basically said the best one is to have some red strobe lights. And that’s what we did, they were attached to the fire alarm so that when that went off, those red strobe lights would start blinking and you know, in various areas of the plant where the employees were at.
Bill: So yeah, you got to kind of investigate what you need and there are, there are tools. Or I should say tools, but let’s say devices that will help you get employees out, especially some employees that might be overweight. They just don’t move fast enough. There may be some things you can do to help, help them get out.
Bill: You just gotta, gotta think and, and find out.
Ryan: Ruth, Elizabeth, do either of you have questions for Bill?
Ruth: No, I don’t.
Elizabeth: Oh, I don’t, it was clear enough.
Ryan: Let’s see, oh Bill, I think you covered all the points. So, good job with your presentation today.
