The duty to care for employees and protect them from undue risk has never been more important. Each year, the U.S. experiences an estimated 240 million calls made to 9-1-1. Because of this, lawmakers have enacted federal regulations like Kari’s Law and the RAY BAUM’s Act. These legislations help ensure certain protections are provided during emergency situations. For example, emergency calls must be routed to the correct call center and a caller’s exact location needs to be easily identifiable.
Mass notifications help organizations fulfill their duty of care
However, businesses should not just prioritize compliance with these important federal legislations. Leaders need to be able to quickly alert their people to keep them out of harm’s way. By integrating E911 technology with enhanced notification and alerting software, organizations can ensure 100% compliance while protecting their people. These solutions help to define the “who, when, and where” during emergency situations and automatically communicate this information to employees. Below, we will explain the many benefits organizations gain by integrating E911 and mass notification systems.
Organizations have an obligation to keep employees safe, whether they are on-site, working remotely, or traveling for business. Businesses and security professionals must be able to effectively respond to physical and digital threats that might impact their teams. This responsibility is only magnified by today’s increase in risk events.
With an automated mass notification system, organizations can quickly reach team members anywhere, anytime. Leaders can notify their teams in case of emergency, enable reliable two-way communication, and mobilize a response team if necessary.
Read our white paper, “From Chaos to Control: The importance of integrated notification and response systems in emergency situations”, to learn more.
E911 technology enables compliance with U.S. federal legislation
Organizations are now required to comply with two E911 regulations: Kari’s Law and the RAY BAUM’s Act:
Kari’s Law
Kari’s Law requires that anyone must be able to dial 9-1-1 from a multi-line telephone system (MLTS) and reach services without interruption or delay. The law was made in honor of Kari Hunt whose daughter tried dialing 9-1-1 on her behalf. However, she could not reach help due to having to dial “9” before 9-1-1.
The RAY BAUM’s Act
The RAY BAUM’s Act requires organizations to automatically provide an emergency caller’s “dispatchable location” to the nearest emergency call center or Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). The dispatchable location must include detailed location information such as a street address, floor, apartment, or suite number. The goal is for emergency responders to be able to find the caller without undue delay.
These regulations ensure that individuals receive critical help as quickly and easily as possible during emergencies. Additionally, Kari’s Law and the RAY BAUM’s Act helps responders reach a caller’s exact location even inside large, crowded buildings. E911 solutions ensure compliance with these two federal regulations and help fulfill an organization’s duty of care to employees. With cloud-based E911 solutions, companies can protect their workforce, especially as mobile and work-from-home models become the standard.
E911 addresses three business challenges:
- Find: Quickly locate an employee who dials 9-1-1.
- Route: Correctly route a 9-1-1 call to the PSAP closest to the caller’s location versus the headquarters’ location.
- Notify: Ensure on-site security is aware of the emergency, where it is located in the building or campus, and whether they can provide additional help to the emergency caller or first responders upon arrival.
More powerful together: Combining RedSky E911 and mass notification with incident communications
Organizations can enhance emergency management, streamline everyday operations, and strengthen organizational resilience with an integrated E911 and mass notification solution. Automating mass notifications helps to increase efficiency and improve the impact your team members can make in critical situations.
Overall, organizations need to uphold their duty of care to employees and promote a safe, secure environment. Beyond that, compliance with Kari’s Law and the RAY BAUM’s Act is a federal mandate. Companies may be liable if emergency callers cannot reach 911 services or be located within your enterprise. Organizations can achieve duty of care and federal compliance goals by combining E911 and mass notification technology.
Everbridge provides organizations in the U.S. and Canada with a world-class, integrated E911 and mass notification solution. E911 powered by RedSky ensures federal E911 compliance while Everbridge Mass Notification enhances incident communications. Whether on or off campus, our platform dynamically locates users, routes the 9-1-1 call to the nearest PSAP, and notifies security personnel. Everbridge can also automatically alert designated individuals of the emergency and leaders can facilitate evacuations or take additional actions if necessary.
To begin your journey toward compliance and a safer, more resilient organization, read “From Chaos to Control: The importance of integrated notification and response systems in emergency situations”.
Curious about enhancing your notification capabilities or complying with federal E911 legislation? Get in touch at redskypartners@everbridge.com to learn more.
Resilience is more than just a goal that organizations strive to achieve. With an increased number of critical events, including cyber-attacks, extreme weather and violent crime, resilience is vital for the short-term and long-term success of any operation. Everbridge and Atos sought out to find the links between resilience and success, with a report from Dr. Stefan Vieweg, Director of the Institute for Compliance and Corporate Governance (ICC) at the Rheinische Fachhochschule in Cologne, Germany.
The study comprised responses from 226 businesses across Europe, with a range of employees anywhere from under 3,000 to over 100,000, and across numerous industries. Our most recent blog discussed the importance of resilience and the steps organizations can take to achieve their goals. Dr. Vieweg’s research identified seven key aspects of resilience:
- Resilience has a significant impact on the bottom line.
- Money is not everything in resilience.
- Talking is easier than execution.
- There is a reason for resilience among top performers.
- An excess of spending does not necessarily help.
- There is a sweet spot of resilience investment.
- Digitalization and automation matter.
These seven findings can serve as the guide for organizations to assess their own strengths and weaknesses, and map out the policies and procedures they need to implement to improve their resilience.
1. Resilience has a significant impact on the bottom line
Prioritizing resilience means taking proactive measures to reduce the impact of critical events and recover quickly. Resilience directly affects financial stability, and the data tells the whole story. The most resilient companies suffered only a 7% loss in annual sales revenue due to critical events, compared to 145% of annual sales revenue for underperforming companies. The difference is 20x greater losses.
2. Money is not everything in resilience
According to Vieweg’s research, organizations of all sizes showed a similar trend: underperforming companies almost always spent more on risk and resilience measures than the top performing ones. The biggest reason for this is the cost savings of a unified, automated solution compared to putting out fires with disparate systems each time a new critical event occurs.
The top performing companies spent an average of 10% of revenue per year on resilience, but the least resilient companies spent over 18%. Rather than spending on piecemeal solutions or spending as critical events occur, investing in integrated, automated solutions pays off financially and in terms of greater preparedness.
3. There is a sweet spot of resilience investment
That leads to another constant, which is that the optimal financial commitment is between 10-25% of revenue. Companies in this range allowed approximately 30% damage aversion, with companies under 50,000 employees performing slightly better. Spending more is not as important as spending wisely, namely with digitization and automation.
4. An excess of spending does not significantly help
While investing in resilience is critical to success, Vieweg’s research found that spending beyond 25% of annual revenue on resilience has diminishing returns. Organizations need to make careful plans for future investments to maximize return on investment.
Similar to the reasoning in the finding that money is not everything in resilience, some decision makers may feel that spending on specific solutions to solve for risk management, digital security, employee communication, and other aspects of resilience is beneficial, when in reality, investing in one platform that provides an integrated solution for organizational resilience will save time, effort, and money.
5. Digitization and automation matter
Dr. Vieweg’s research found a direct positive correlation between the degree of digitalization and preparedness for a critical event, particularly in terms of identifying risks. Among the top performing organizations, 46% have an early-warning system established, but only 29% of those surveyed reported very high levels of automation across processes.
Dr. Vieweg concluded that there is a significant potential to improve resilience across organizations of all sizes with automated, integrated risk management processes.
6. Talking is easier than execution
Over 60% of the organizations in the study acknowledged that critical events have become more frequent, more unpredictable, and have had a larger impact. But less than 50% have explicit resilience goals operationalized.
While Vieweg’s research showed that top performing companies consider and follow through on specific goals more often than lower performing organizations, there is still an industry-wide need for growth, particularly when it comes to developing risk and resilience strategies.
7. There is a reason for resilience among top performers
The most resilient organizations not only implemented resilience measures and risk management solutions at a higher pace than others, but these methods proved effective, were used continuously, and introduced avenues of mitigation. Over 50% of the top performers have an established risk management process.
Overall, Dr. Vieweg’s findings show that organizations who take a proactive, consistent approach to meeting established resilience goals are among the most successful. Even still, most organizations have potential for improvement in terms of digitalization and automation, and he concluded that digitalization would pay off quickly for all businesses. To learn more about these seven findings and read further analysis from the study, download our eBook “The Research Behind Resilience: Why Prioritizing and Investing in Resilience Matters.”