What are the steps involved in preparing an emergency response guide?

Compiling an emergency response guide that can be implemented and used in the event of an emergency requires four core steps: understanding your own risks, anchoring specific scenarios, polishing the disposal process, and dynamic verification and iteration. Don't believe the online saying that you can just use a general template by changing its name. At least for more than a dozen small, medium and micro enterprises I have contacted, when it comes to emergencies, the guides written with the template are all waste paper that takes a long time to flip through and can't find the key points.

There are actually two different tendencies in compilation logic in the industry. One is the "full coverage group", which believes that all imaginable risks should be listed regardless of probability to avoid any omissions. The other is the "priority group", which advocates focusing on the Top 10 risks with high probability of occurrence and large losses first, and then gradually iterate on the rest. In my personal practice, I prefer the latter. When I was making a guide for a local fresh food cold chain warehouse, the general template that the administration department got at the beginning even listed volcanic eruptions and war responses. We finally cut it down to only the three most frequent and high-loss scenarios, including ammonia leakage in the cold storage, fires in the sorting area, and large-scale outflow of expired products. The rest will be updated every quarter. Otherwise, it will be more than 100 pages thick, and no one on the frontline employees who move goods in the warehouse every day will be willing to read it, and it will be in vain.

If you want to be a guide, you must first understand your own family background, right? Don't just copy those from your peers. The risks of other chemical parks and cultural and creative parks are not the same thing at all. Copying them is of no use except to cope with inspections. It would be best to sit down with the senior front-line employees, the security officer, and the person in charge of operations to chat for a long time, and sort out all the incidents that have happened in the unit in the past three years, the hidden dangers that almost happened, and the pitfalls that we may encounter in the same industry, and organize them into a risk ledger. This is the basis of all guidelines. The most outrageous thing I've seen before is that an Internet company copied the factory's emergency manual, which also included steps for wearing gas masks. Their company didn't even have five respirators that met fire protection requirements. It was just a show for supervision.

After you’ve done your research, don’t rush to write down the clauses. You have to map each risk to a specific scenario, and don’t write empty words. For example, it is useless to just write "evacuate immediately in case of fire". You have to break it down into specific scenarios that people can encounter every day, such as smoke from the circuit in the office area, fire in the server in the computer room, and fire in the pan in the tea room. Who is the first person to deal with each scenario? The first step Who should turn off the power first or extinguish the fire first? Who should call 119? Who should pick up the firefighters at the intersection? Who should be responsible for counting people? All of them should be assigned to specific positions. Do not write "relevant responsible persons". When an accident occurs, no one wants to take responsibility. If you push me and I push you, it will only delay things. This problem had occurred during a fire drill in an office building before. The security guard took the old guide and flipped through it for three minutes to find the "relevant responsible person." Later, when the guide was revised, the first person in charge of each floor was directly listed as the on-duty floor steward. The phone number was printed directly on the header of the guide, so you could see it when you looked up when something went wrong. There has never been a situation where the person can't be found.

After the scene is dismantled, you have to work out the specific disposal process. There is actually a small debate here. Some people think that the more detailed the process is, the better. It is best to block every step to avoid random operations. Some people think that flexibility should be left on the scene. After all, no one can predict what will happen in emergencies. When I do it, I usually make a balance. The core bottom line requirements are stuck, and the flexible disposal power is given to the top person in charge on site. For example, when I was doing emergency procedures for mass looting of customers by chain stores, the core requirements were two: first, to ensure that employees and customers are not injured or trampled, and second, to minimize property losses. As for whether to call the police immediately or whether to temporarily close the store, the on-site duty manager can directly decide, without having to report to the headquarters for approval. If the order comes down, either everyone will be injured or all the goods will be robbed.

It’s not complete once you’ve written out all the content. You have to take it out and walk around to see if it’s useful. Don't engage in a dramatic drill with half a month's notice. Just take an afternoon on an ordinary working day and suddenly sound the alarm and go through the process to see if everyone can find the guide and follow the steps. When I was doing a verification for a children's training institution, I found that the original instructions of "counting people in the northwest corner of the playground after evacuation" were not implemented at all. When it came time to evacuate, everyone was crowded in the southeast corner, which was closer to the building door. No one was willing to go around to the northwest corner. Later, the meeting point was changed directly, and the guide was adjusted simultaneously. Otherwise, what was written was different from what was actually done, and it would be written in vain.

Don’t think that once the guide is written, it will be finalized once and for all. During the quarterly review, if new risk points emerge, or even the company’s office space is changed, or the personnel structure is adjusted, the guide must be updated simultaneously. For example, after the adjustment of epidemic prevention policies last year, many companies’ previous epidemic-related emergency guides were directly invalidated, and they had to immediately make up new procedures for dealing with people with fevers and large-scale employee shortages. Otherwise, when they are used, they will find that they are outdated and there will be no time to cry.