|  2 min read

Improving evacuation procedures at your workplace

Improving evacuation procedures at your workplace Photo

Fire drills are good practice for your employees. They become familiar with what is required, where they need to go, and who they need to report to.

But what about your visitors?
They don’t know your workplace safety plan or emergency procedures. How do they know where to go? How do you know if they exited the building safely?

If you have a traditional paper guest book, and you happened to remember to grab it when you evacuated, then you can see the names of who signed in but not much else.

  • What do they look like?
  • Who were they there to see?
  • How do you contact them?
  • How do you know if somebody else made sure they left safely?

This is where a Visitor Management System (VMS) comes in. A VMS allows you to capture all of your visitors’ photos and contact information. Being able to view critical data on any device, including your smartphones, helps you to make sure everyone is accounted for. Relying on someone to grab the lobby book for roll-calls, puts your visitors at risk and distracts from the focus of getting everyone out of the building safely.

Here are some ways to use a VMS to enforce your evacuation procedures:

  1. Get an overview:
    See how many visitors you have and who they are. With a comprehensive digital guest book you can instantly access a roll-call view, showing visitors who have not yet signed out.
    Roll Call View
  2. Notify your visitors:
    send a mass notification with your visitor management system to inform your visitors and let them know where to meet at a safe muster point. This notification should include the host, i.e. employee, they were visiting.Mass notification for emergency
  3. Identify and acknowledge who is safe:
    once you have accounted for individual visitors at the safe point, you can sign them out, to keep a record of who has left the evacuation site. Even better: use visitor badges to identify individuals more easily by comparing them to their photos.
    Visitor badge
  4. Follow-up if needed:
    If a visitor does not arrive, send an alert from your visitor management system to your guests and their host directly. This helps to ensure everyone is aware and notified about your safety procedures.

    Quick alert action

Watch this video to see how to easily view which visitors are still on site and how to send relevant alerts:

We all hope that these situations never arise, however, it is critical to be prepared. Make sure you have a solid process in place. If you are still using a paper lobby book to keep track of who is entering your building, consider upgrading to a cloud VMS solution that will allow your business to follow the steps above.

Want to get more tips on how to improve your emergency evacuation plan? Book a free demo with our team.

 

Ryan Canby, Sign In Enterprise   Written by Ryan Canby, Customer Success Advocate at Sign In Enterprise.

 

 

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