In order to protect the health and safety of their employees and their businesses, the owners and managers should:

• Prepare, review, revise and exercise their emergency plans and evacuation procedures.
• Maintain an Emergency Supplies Kit.

Critical elements of a business emergency plan:

(1) Life Safety: Teach your employees about sheltering-in-place and evacuation. Identify external assembly areas if you are evacuated. Establish a system to account for your employees. Plan for employees with special needs or disabilities.

(2) Direction & Control: Who is in charge of making critical decisions, managing resources, analyzing information? Ensure that the chain of command during an emergency is clear to all of your employees.

(3) Communications: How will you contact your employees? Your customers? Neighboring businesses? Local officials?

(4) Property Protection: Install protection systems. Make sure you have plans for shutting down or moving critical equipment. Identify critical records or data and back them up at another location.

(5) Public Information/Media Relations: After a large emergency affecting your business, news media will want to speak with you. Prepare background information about your company. Designate and train a spokesperson who can speak comfortably with the media and provide critical information for your clients and customers.

(6) Recovery & Restoration - Business Continuity Planning: A thorough business continuity plan may help you maintain your business operations throughout an emergency or ensure a quick recovery after an emergency has occurred. A Business Continuity Plan should address the following:

• Essential Functions: Identify and prioritize functions and identify the number of personnel and the equipment needed to perform these functions.
• Delegation of Authority: Identify personnel who are able to make critical decisions and identify the circumstances under which their authority would be used.
• Order of Succession: Develop orders of succession of sufficient depth and geographical dispersal for key positions within your department and develop procedures for the conditions under which succession will take place.
• Alternate Facilities: Identify alternate facilities (home or alternate office space) where priority functions could be performed and describe any limitations for full operations (space, equipment, infrastructure).
• Communications: Describe methods of communication needed for operations and tools that are available at alternate facilities.
• Vital Records & Databases: Identify critical operations documents, financial records, and timekeeping items and describe where how and where they are duplicated.

(7) Administration & Logistics: Identify required record-keeping methods and designate resource acquisition and tracking personnel.

8) Drills & Exercises: Periodically test the effectiveness of the emergency plan using realistic scenarios that involve all employees.

9) Emergency Plan Training: Delineate the periodic training requirements for the general and emergency response personnel in your organization.

10) Emergency Plan Maintenance: Designate someone in your organization that will be responsible for maintaining essential elements of the emergency plan, keeping inventory of emergency kits, testing equipment, etc.

For additional information: http://www.ready.gov/business or www.ready4business.org