Ride the Lightning

Disaster Strikes! What to Expect From a Good Mass Notification System

April 16, 2018

Legaltech News (sub. req.) had a nice article about what you should expect from a good mass notification system in the event of a disaster. We are a very mobile society which means contacting us in the event of a disaster can be challenging.

There has been quite an evolution of the emergency mass notification market which has improved how law firms and other entities communicate. Some products focus on the speed of message creation and delivery. Other advancements simplify how company administrators locate people and understand their proximity to danger.

Below are some of the features desirable in an emergency mass notification system.

Multi-Channel Notification Delivery: Mass notification no longer means sending a one-way text blast to an audience. During an emergency, leaders should use every available channel associated with a person—text, phone call, e-mail, social media, mobile app push, intranet, Slack, television screens in the lobby, and any other message destination available to your organization.

Notification Templates: Every second counts in an emergency. This is no time to be drafting more than you have to. Use a pre-built template which already includes the message type, which channels will be used for message delivery, the audience you need to reach, and your message. You should be able to send a message to the appropriate people in just a couple of clicks.

Two-Way Messaging: When an emergency occurs, the people closest to the emergency can often be the ones with the most information. Modern systems offer two-way messaging, allowing the recipients to submit content and reply to messages. For a wellness check, send a message with a read confirmation, which requests a person to acknowledge receipt, often by pressing the number one on their phone. When people don't acknowledge receipt, resend the message across multiple channels until delivery is confirmed. To get more specific feedback, send questions to the recipients in the form of a survey to assess impact severity, office conditions, recipient needs, etc.

Event Pages: An event page provides one location for the ongoing management of the crisis, a place you can distribute status updates, important resources and media, and severity levels. Instead of sending a mass message each time you have an update, use an event page as a place your people can visit to get up to date information and submit messages.

Audience Grouping: Many emergencies only impact a portion of your workforce, and a good mass notification system will help you find the right audience for a message. Most organizations first organize their people based on location. This grouping provides basic filtering for location-based notifications like office closures, inclement weather, and other local emergencies. Given the wide range of potential critical events, organizations also organize their people by department, project team, management level, and other attributes to create dynamic groups. You might, for example, send a message only to management level employees in a state where a physical disaster has occurred.

Native Mobile Applications: Modern mass notification vendors offer native mobile applications for both iOS and Android devices, improving safety communications on multiple fronts. First, mobile applications (apps) allow your people to share their location on an integrated map so you can pinpoint a person's location relative to any event. Second, mobile apps can be used to push notifications, offering a valuable additional channel for message delivery. Third, mobile apps can be used to deliver real-time updates about weather, traffic, or other information relative to the emergency from third party sources. Finally, your people can use the mobile app to send messages to your system administrator, including calls for help and photos/videos from the site of the emergency.

Integrated Maps: Your notification system's integrated map will visually display your people and offices in proximity to the events you're tracking. Whether you see inclement weather on the radar, a road closure on a major freeway, or a shooting at a nearby building, you can determine which of your people may be in danger. Select to see the exact physical location of your incoming messages and communicate directly with your offices and people from the map view.

Geo-Fencing: With a geo-fencing system, draw a virtual fence around a particular area in danger, and alert every employee within that fenced area with targeted messaging. Whether your people are in your office, traveling, or working remotely for the day, they will remain informed.

Smart Integrations: Integrating with existing internal business systems, such as HR systems and employee directories, automates manual entries to save time when uploading employees into a system. While this basic integration gives you the foundation for audience grouping, you can also integrate additional data sources to improve targeting capabilities. If you have a large group of traveling employees, sync your organization's travel data with your notification system to create dynamic groups. For example, if you have ten employees booked at a hotel in New York City, those employees would be part of a dynamic New York City group, along with your other employees who live and work in the area.

Curated Event Monitoring: Your mass notification provider should be watching current news related to the emergency, delivering real-time updates as events develop. Subscribe to trusted sources local to your facilities, including local news channels, police departments, weather services, and traffic updates. Third party event monitoring makes your organization better equipped to protect your people with current information.

When I think of the primitive mass notifications of the past, I am astonished at how far we have come. If you run a law firm of any size, you will certainly want to investigate a notification system which fits your needs and your wallet.

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