Annual Workplace Readiness Exercises

The ultimate test of your company’s readiness is an emergency or disaster.  Hopefully, your organization has had an opportunity to test your readiness under considerably less stressful situations.

Training can take many forms:

• Orientation & Awareness Sessions - These are regularly scheduled discussion sessions to provide information, answer questions and identify needs and concerns.
• Tabletop Exercise - Members of the emergency management group meet in a conference room setting to discuss their responsibilities and how they would react to emergency scenarios.  This is a cost-effective and efficient way to identify areas of overlap and confusion before conducting more demanding training activities.
• Walk-Through Drill - The emergency management group and response teams actually perform their response functions.  This activity generally involves more people and is more thorough than a tabletop exercise.
• Functional Drills - These drills test specific functions such as medical response, emergency notifications, warning and communications procedures and equipment, though not necessarily at the same time.  Personnel are asked to evaluate the systems and identify problem areas.
• Evacuation Drill - Personnel walk the evacuation route to a designated area where procedures for accounting for all personnel are tested.  Participants are asked to make notes as they go along, of what might become a hazard during an emergency, e.g. stairways cluttered with debris, smoke in the hallways.  Plans are modified accordingly.
• Full-Scale Exercise - A real-life emergency situation is simulated as closely as possible.  This exercise involves company emergency response personnel, employees, management and community response organizations.