Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance
Dean Gardenhire, Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance
Dean Gardenhire is no stranger to disaster. With nearly 30 years experience in business continuity, disaster recovery, and emergency and crisis management, Gardenhire is responsible for keeping Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance (KFB) operational during natural disasters, severe weather, and other incidents while ensuring the well-being of its employees in offices across 120 counties. In business for more than 60 years, KFB provides insurance protection to more than 460,000 Kentucky families and businesses. When major disasters occur, KFB experiences the catastrophe as both a claims event and a business continuity challenge.
Hurricane Ike Puts Systems and Processes to the Test
The day after Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston, Texas, on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008, the storm hit Kentucky with the intensity of the storm’s winds exceeding the expectations of many. The winds reached KFB’s Louisville headquarters at 1:40 p.m. that Sunday afternoon, and by 3 p.m. the building had lost power. Within 30 minutes, KFB’s IT staff was assembling by phone to coordinate their response, and other emergency teams were activated and put on standby. During the incident, KFB sent five broadcasts: two to its employee and agent base and three to management and the emergency response team. Thanks to a concerted response, KFB remained open for business without interruption.
While KFB had tested its use of the Everbridge emergency notification system extensively prior to Hurricane Ike, Gardenhire identified opportunities for improvement in two key areas of the company’s emergency communications response during the post-analysis of the incident: accuracy of contact information and message creation. To make sure everyone received relevant information and instructions during an actual emergency, KFB realized it needed to update contact information more frequently. Additionally, Gardenhire learned that message recipients’ reactions differ according to whether they receive voice, text, or e-mail messages. The language and construction of messages affected comprehension levels. Gardenhire now has a library of customizable messages written in advance that serve as templates in an emergency. A few short months later, those process improvements would prove their worth.
An Ice Storm Wreaks Havoc
The January 28, 2009 ice storm in the Midwest and Central Plains hit Kentucky harder than any other state. The ice storm caused widespread damage, leaving more than 100,000 Kentucky residents without power for a week, causing 24 deaths, and resulting in more than 50,000 customer claims. A weather forecast the previous day made it clear that trouble was on the way. Gardenhire geared up for an emergency, placing emergency teams on alert and monitoring conditions statewide to assess communications needs and direct resources to claimants and field offices.
KFB had long-standing plans to manage these challenges and was even better prepared due to experience during Hurricane Ike.
Once the storm hit, KFB used Everbridge Aware to notify employees that the home office would be closed for everyone except emergency personnel. Gardenhire used the system several times that morning to communicate with KFB’s general employee population and district claims managers to give them status reports. The Everbridge system also provides the capability to create a dynamic conference bridge, allowing employees across the state to participate in a conference call by pressing a single button on their phones. KFB used this feature to coordinate decisions and response plans. Everbridge Aware’s response tracking and reporting of all communications produced a complete incident record, which was useful for post-incident analysis.
“Our ability to conference together a key strategic group using Everbridge Aware when travel is impossible is a game-changer for us and is now part of the standard process for an office closing.”
– Dean Gardenhire, Corporate Contingency Manager, Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance
Sample Message - January 27, 2009 11:33 PM
This is a message from the Kentucky Farm Bureau emergency notification system. This is not a test. Please listen to the entire message.
Mayor Jerry Abramson has requested that local businesses delay opening by two hours on Wednesday morning. Both the Insurance company and the Federation employees at the state office in Louisville are asked to report on a two-hour delay on Wednesday morning. Watch your local news and call the employee severe weather hotline for additional updates. The employee hotline number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. Thank you.
Before using Everbridge, it was routine for communications to take a full day before the same number of people could be informed of a single message, often delivered after it was no longer valid, leading to confusion. Using Everbridge frees up Gardenhire and his team to work on critical response coordination tasks instead of working the phones.
Peer-to-Peer: Dean's Advice
- Create messages or message templates in advance. People interpret messages differently, making it a challenge to create effective messages on the fly. Preparing messages in advance gives you more time to work on the right situational wording and the opportunity to proof your work carefully before broadcast.
- Update contact information on a regular basis to make sure you reach as many people as possible. Analyze your broadcast results using the broadcast logs and history to see how effective the distribution was (speed, number of targets reached).
- When communicating with a large audience, use a longer broadcast duration and more contact cycles rather than re-broadcasting the message to the same audience. This will minimize confusion with people who confirm your original message late and simplifies your analysis of the broadcast history logs.
- Create and use groups strategically. More selective grouping allows the opportunity to tailor broadcasts with more or less information depending on the specific group.
- Use an easily identifiable callback number that goes to a direct-dial voice mailbox to catch the inevitable calls that result from a misunderstood message. The voice mailbox should have the same information that was contained in the broadcast.
- When using conference calling, send messages to both voice and text paths. Use the pre-call reminder that provides call-in instructions in case the recipient misses the live call.
