07th April 2009 Major Incident Planning

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All organisations, especially those with multiple departments and locations, need to have contingency plans for major incidents. We’ve been working with several of our clients to devise a model that provides robust processes which will allow them to adapt and react quickly as a major incident scenario unfolds. A large part of achieving continuity in the face of a major incident will be the ability to predict the incapacity of key personnel and the relocation of resources to alternative sites. Together, we are creating strategies for an evolving plan with essential communications. This will allow our clients to plan resources and take vital decisions early on.

The first stage of major incident planning involves identifying who is absent, from which departments they are missing and where the shortages will be geographically. Crucially, FirstCare data will pinpoint which skill sets will be lacking due to each team member’s absence. Some absence will inevitably be due to adverse travelling conditions. Because the data that FirstCare collects also includes how each team member travels to work, it will be possible to identify other team members with similar skills, who travel by unaffected means and who could substitute for absent colleagues. For example, if trains are not running, we can identify someone who walks to work, who could be called in to cover for a stranded commuter.

The second vital planning element is communications. In a major incident, workers will often need to be diverted to alternative locations. In the NHS, for example, departments may need to be closed if insufficient numbers of people with key skills cannot get to work. FirstCare can communicate by SMS, email and pagers to give new instructions to key staff early in the crisis. This may mean that across two NHS sites, one fully staffed team can be assembled, to keep one operating theatre or critical facility open, rather than close two.

This principle can be applied to any industry sector. Filters can be set on a number of criteria; skills, modes of transport, or sheer numbers of staff. These will allow each of our clients to establish trigger points which signal the need to deploy staff to keep services running at optimum levels.

Continuity through a crisis depends on precise, up to date information. FirstCare’s constantly validated data means that accurate records are always available. We are more likely even than line managers to have up to date personal records on team members, meaning than during a major incident, FirstCare information can more easily be relied on than in-house data. Having an outsourced provider of validated data also means that it is still available during a major incident, during which your in-house HR team may not be fully operational.

Outsourcing also helps to provide a fourth element in major incident planning. Because we collect and report data in real time, we see immediately a declining level of absence on any given day. Our clients have the option to set a critical absence level which will trigger an alert that a major incident scenario has occurred. At a pre-determined percentage level of absence, normal operation becomes very difficult, often due to lack of skills and health & safety requirements; but in some sectors it becomes a legal impossibility. FirstCare will determine the moment that a trigger level is reached and immediately notify managers, who can then make effective decisions and plans.

As our initiative on major incident planning develops, we will be looking to add as much information as possible to help our clients through a crisis. These are early days, so if you’d like to be part of formulating this exciting breakthrough, please register here (Click to register interest) and we’ll keep you up to date about further consultations and meetings.