My Company's Crisis and/or Disaster Preparedness

My Company's Crisis and/or Disaster Preparedness

Introduction

The distributed questionnaire serves as a self assessment tool for employees to judge their own readiness to the described concerns. It is an effective method. Employees, themselves judge how well they are prepared for concerning issues and conflicts without fear of rejection or discrimination. Since each survey, or questionnaire, lacks names, management can also assess the readiness of their employees while maintaining anonymity. If they feel that their staff lacks the required level of awareness with respect to safety or if they have any specific concern; it can be improved with group session that tackles the very issues that showed concern. Even if the group contains individuals that do not feel they need a refresher, it will only increase their awareness and might even point out any misconceptions they might have.

Discussion

The answers to the questions are numerical. An answer with a '1' means that the individual strongly disagrees. '2' means that the individual disagrees. '3' means that the individual agrees and similarly '4' means that the individual strongly agrees. The very first question is about whether the survey taker is familiar with the evacuation plans of the building. Familiarity with such plans is crucial to the safety of everyone and all employees, staff, managers and executives should be aware of what should be done in case an evacuation is deemed necessary. Of the ten questionnaires analyzed, there was one individual who answered with by strongly disagreeing and two disagreed. This is intolerable and should be amended immediately. Everyone should be aware of the proper course of action if such a situation arises. Also, the questioned individuals did not have an adequate sense of personal safety. This can be corrected by circulating memos regarding facilities and numbers of staff.

Another alarming realization is that individuals feel that they are not financially and professionally secure in case something negative occurs with the organization. Most are concerned about the status of their jobs, whether they will be unemployed or not, coverage through benefits in the face of a crisis and whether or not their families will be catered for in such an event. This matter should also be addressed as soon as possible. If employees are unsure about their job security they will not work as efficiently as they would if their minds were put at ease. The staff should not be given any false information and if their jobs will be at risk in the face of a crisis then they should be informed beforehand (Barlow & Iverson, 2005). Similarly, benefits and handing out of funds should be explained in detail. Every questions, doubt and misconception must be removed. If this issue is not removed, this doubt can build up and have negative effects on performance. Furthermore, if these issues are not addressed, not only will it be unethical, but if employees are not made aware of their benefits and it is purposely misconstrued in the policies, it can be legally challenged ...