Planning for emergencies

February 23, 2026

How can workplaces reduce confusion and misinformation during emergencies through standardized response communication?

The worst time to develop an emergency action plan is during an actual emergency. There’s simply no replacement for pre-planning.

Most employers know this but often don’t know where to start. The truth is that an EAP can be as simple or as in-depth as the amount of time and resources you want to invest. For anyone tasked with the health and safety of employees, though, the most important place to start is with the foundational pieces – and build from there.

Although workplaces vary greatly across industries, functions and geography, all EAPs need to:

• Identify the most likely business interruptions that may occur. For some workplaces, it could be cyberattacks and ransomware, whereas for others it could be severe weather.

• Define ownership and authority and then assign them to specific people to own and communicate during emergency events. Assign backups as well to ensure no gaps.

• Create standardized message templates and responses for each scenario.

• Provide proactive education to staff on what they can expect.

• Maintain communication channel consistency and redundancy. It’s also important to have a multichannel communications strategy, because email and phone trees can fail in the chaos of an emergency, and often only SMS text messages can go through if telecommunication networks are overloaded.

• Define a balance of speed vs. accuracy. For example, early messages during a business disruption will focus on making employees aware of the danger and directing them to a safe location, and then follow-up notifications can provide more details and context. In these situations, sharing a “We don’t know but are working on it” message is better than no communications at all.

If a plan hasn’t been put in place, all these components still apply to achieve the goal – only now they’ll happen under duress and be executed in real time.

Not all emergencies can be prevented, but through fast, reliable communications, the risk to employees and vendors can be greatly mitigated. The first step always begins with proactively developing an emergency plan before disaster strikes.

Embrace that it will be constantly updated and improved, but as long as you have the foundational pieces set and understand who will communicate how and when, there’s simply no replacement for pre-planning.