How to
Use an Intranet to Manage a Crisis
How do you respond during a crisis? What is your intranet's role?
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Overview
First of all, your intranet contains important information that your employees can easily access. Key data like Locations, Employees and their respective roles in a disaster, as well as the documented disaster recovery plans and videos. This supports the fact that an intranet is a powerful platform to effectively manage crises. Having a dedicated content area for different types of crises will make employees aware of emergency protocols and how they should respond when crises arise.
Crisis situations are unpredictable and can happen at any time. Crisis can be internal or external. The coronavirus is an example of an external crisis. While internal crisis can be employee misconduct or an accident that happened within the company premises. Having the right tool to execute emergency protocols, send important alerts and updates, confirm employee safety, and manage assistance or response efforts is vital.
Your intranet can be a very powerful communication tool, but most of us wouldn’t think that an intranet can be used as a crisis management tool, right?
How to Utilize An Intranet During Crisis
Assistance Support
Depending on which type of crisis situation, some of your employees might need physical, financial, or emotional support.
You can create a designated content area on your intranet for those who want to offer support such as fundraising or relief operations.
Emergency Protocols, Policies, Documentation, and Procedures
An intranet is a centralized platform where important information is retained. Allowing your employees to search and easily access critical information is vital. An intranet can be used to store emergency policies and procedures. For instance, putting up procedures for earthquake and fire evacuations.
Make sure to use keywords or correct tagging to make it easier for employees to search for the specific protocol, procedures, or documentation.
It will also be helpful if there’s a place in your intranet where employees can access a list of useful links during a crisis.
Most importantly, ensure that your crisis management protocols are being monitored and reviewed to prevent outdated or irrelevant protocols.
Employee Alert Systems
During a crisis, alert systems will be your primary communication tool. Alert systems are a way of sharing important urgent information and updates across your entire company.
An alert system will notify employees via mobile app notification, SMS, email, or a display banner on the intranet.
Alert messages can be composed in an intranet and sent simultaneously across multiple channels which saves you time and ensures the consistency of the message.
However, alerts should only be used to notify employees about the information they need to know. Using it too often will make your employees ignore future alerts.
Create a Crisis Management Experts or Team
When a crisis hits, your employees should know who to call or contact.
A crisis management team on your intranet can create a content area dedicated to crises where employees can ask questions, share experiences, or relay vital information regarding the crisis. This will allow your employees to have more knowledge about crisis or emergency situations so they can determine the risks.
Once there is an emergency situation, it would be helpful if employees can easily escalate the issue to the dedicated crisis management team. Another thing to consider is adding something like a “Crisis Expert” on the individual’s profile to make it easier for other employees to search for the crisis management team in your intranet’s Employee Directory.
Provide Instant and Frequent Updates
During a crisis, ensure that your employees get real-time short updates and alerts. You can also put links to relevant documents, policies, or procedures on your intranet.
How Does Steegle.One Intranet Help in the Event of a Disaster?
- Find People
In the event of a disaster, one of the key issues is who to speak to and in what order. Using the Steegle.One Intranet solution you can create a call-out tree that you publish and then activate in the event of a disaster.
By using Steegle People Profiles which are self-managed by users, you will always have the latest numbers and addresses to contact the vital people.
2. Find Plans
Steegle.One has a wonderful library feature called steel share where you can keep all of the latest and correct versions of your disaster recovery or business continuity manuals. These days many companies are also keeping demo videos on what to do in an emergency as well.
3. Access Remotely
The beauty of a Steegle Steegle.One intranet is that it runs on the backbone of Google sites.
This infrastructure is super resilient and robust and can be accessed from around the world without incurring speed issues due to geolocation (Say accessing intranet sites in the US from Asia).
4. Access on Mobile
Old fashion Intranets rely heavily on the desktop environment. Steegle Steegle.One based on Google Sites is entirely mobile-friendly from the ground up. In the event of a disaster where accessing systems becomes tricky, you will have the reassurance that you can reach vital disaster management knowledge directly from your mobile phone without any need for heavy-duty workstations or mega broadband.
What to Do After a Crisis
Give Credits
Don’t forget to give where credit is due. Acknowledge the contributions done by your employees who made an effort to have successful crisis management.
Evaluate Crisis Management Success and Failures
Since the crisis is unpredictable, there may be instances where we are not prepared—and that’s okay! Having lapses gives you an opportunity to improve how your team manages crises.
Ask for Feedbacks
An important part of improving how you managed crisis is by listening to your employees’ feedbacks. Sending out surveys on how satisfied they are with the overall response will make it easier for your to determine room for improvements.
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