According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the purpose of an emergency action plan is to "facilitate and organize employer and employee actions during workplace emergencies." One of the minimum requirements of an emergency action plan is to account for all employees after an emergency evacuation has been completed. In other words, employees should be notified that an evacuation needs to commence and once that occurs, the employer must account for all employees who were impacted.

This can be extremely difficult when you combine the quickly unfolding events during an emergency and the idea that, in a global economy, impacted employees could be dispersed in far off regions of the world when an emergency occurs.

Take the example of Hive, the connected home devices company based in London. It is a global company with offices in the Europe and the Unites States. When Hurricane Harvey blew threw Houston, Hive had 35 employees impacted. With headquarters in London, one can imagine how difficult it is to account for the safety of employees half way around the world. Fortunately, Hive was able to do so quickly using Safety Officer, an app developed by ServiceRocket for Workplace by Facebook to send alerts to employees affected by Harvey and receive safety confirmation messages all through the Workplace mobile app that employees had installed on their phones. 

“I was able to ping a notification instantaneously to everyone affected by Hurricane Harvey, saving me tons of time,” said Heesom. “I was able to then focus attention on ringing the handful of people who didn’t respond,” says Adrian Heesom, Hive COO. Of the 35 people impacted, 30 confirmed their safety through Safety Officer. Management was then able to focus efforts contacting only the remaining five employee by phone and through their line managers. 

“It would have taken significantly longer to get on the phone and try to find everyone,” says Heesom.

In an emergency, not knowing about the safety of your people is stressful to say the least. But with mobile phones, Workplace by Facebook Work Chat app, and SafetyOfficer by ServiceRocket, Hive was able to reduce that stress and quickly communicate with employees during a terrible disaster. 

“If you are safe, it’s not something that will disturb or worry you," says Heesom.

Learn More About Safety Officer by ServiceRocket

Safety Officer for Workplace by Facebook allows crisis management teams to alert employees and request that employees check in to indicate their current status and location, as appropriate. To learn more about Safety Officer click on the button below.