The impact of ash on employee safety

With the new rumblings in Iceland it’s a good time to think back to 2010. In April of 2010 I was impacted by the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. The resulting ash cloud caused chaos with ash covering large areas of Europe. Flights were severely affected leaving many stranded away from home. This is a perfect example of how mass communications can really benefit your organisation.

The impact to flights affects many functions in an organisation from the sales teams to freight and the senior management team to name just a few. With such widespread disruption what lessons can be learnt:

–       Locate employees: With employees effectively being grounded at hub airports with little to no notice it is not always possible to locate where employees might be.

–       Support those stranded: With any unexpected and extended stay simple things like finding a hotel can become an issue. The ability to understand who is in need and support them in real time will help the employee and help minimise disruption to the organisation

–       Carry on with business: With people scattered or stranded, collaboration and coordination can become very hard. Having the ability to communicate and share important information is a key to effective command and control.

Using 2010 as a timely reminder, now is as good a time as any to ensure that your mobile workforce and travellers can be contacted and will know how to respond if they are asked to. It is essential to both have and test the tool set and procedures to do this is. If nothing else, this makes a good scenario for a crisis management exercise. 

Everbridge’s Safety Connection leverages location intelligence combined with a market-leading mass notification system to ensure your organisation’s employees are always reachable and accounted for.

Learn more about Safety Connection by visiting our website, or read the latest Safety Connection data sheet.