Steps to prepare emergency response guidelines

Take stock of global risks, dismantle specific scenarios, demarcate boundaries of authority and responsibilities, polish implementation texts, and dynamically iterate updates. There is no one-size-fits-all template, and all rigidly crafted guidelines that are divorced from actual scenarios are essentially ineffective.

Think about it, the emergency guide is like a first-aid kit at home. Don't stuff a bunch of useless health care products into it. Put band-aids, styptic powder, and antipyretics that are actually useful. The more you stuff it, the less useful you will find. Last year, when I helped an e-commerce industrial park in Hangzhou make a fire emergency guide, a new member of the team at first directly modified it from a general template on the Internet. As a result, he copied all the "Forest Fire Evacuation Points" into it, which made a big joke. This was because he didn't understand the risk base first.

When looking at risks, don’t just look up information by yourself. Talk with senior front-line employees, security managers, and operation and maintenance people who spend time at the site every day. They know the little corners that are prone to problems. For example, next door to the industrial park is a transfer station for the transportation of refined oil products. The risk of leakage of hazardous chemicals and the spread of open flames must be calculated in advance. Don't wait until something goes wrong to remember that it was not included in the plan. Oh, by the way, it is not only necessary to count the risks that have already occurred, but also to identify the potential low-probability risks. For example, due to extreme heat last summer, three air conditioners in the industrial park exploded at the same time. No one expected this before. Later, it was added to the risk list, and mobile air coolers were prepared in advance this year.

Speaking of which, there have been two factions in the industry arguing fiercely in the past two years. One faction is "minimalism" and believes that the emergency guide must fit on an A4 piece of paper. Front-line personnel will know what to do at a glance in an emergency. If you write too much, no one will read it.； The other school is the "full coverage school", which says that under extreme circumstances anything can happen. If one scenario is missed, big problems may occur, and all possibilities must be listed. I have made guides for more than a dozen clients. In fact, there is no need to stick to any faction. The solution is to create a "sub-master version": front-line employees take a pocket version and only list the first three core actions of their positions, without adding a single word. ； The emergency headquarters keeps a full version and clearly writes down the handling logic of all second-level and third-level plans, taking care of both ends.

When dismantling the scene, be sure not to write anything false. Words like "relevant personnel will deal with it as soon as possible" and "properly appease the masses" are the same as not being written. I used to help an Internet company make an emergency plan for payment failures. The initial version said "the technical department is responsible for troubleshooting failures." But when a problem actually occurred, the front-end, back-end, and payment channel teams waited for each other to make the first move. It was delayed for 20 minutes and hundreds of orders were lost. Later, when it was changed, it was directly marked: "The first person responsible for the payment failure is the leader of the payment group. The disposal group must be called within 1 minute. The front-end team will issue a unified maintenance announcement within 3 minutes. The back-end team will first check whether a new version has been launched within 1 hour. The operation team will simultaneously send point-to-point notifications to the top 100 paying merchants." After that, there was no blame game again.

To put it bluntly, the core of the delineation of rights and responsibilities is that there should not be any blank space of "who is in charge of this matter", nor should there be chaos where a bunch of people are rushing to take charge of it. Even if other content is written in a rough way, as long as the person responsible is nailed down, there won't be a big mess if something goes wrong.

When polishing the text, don’t engage in gobbledygook. What do you mean by “necessary protective measures should be taken in the event of leakage?” What do you mean by necessary protective measures? How can the workers in the factory have time to ponder the meaning of your written language? Change it to "Wear a gas mask and chemical protective clothing. If you don't have any equipment, don't approach. Pull up the warning tape and call for people first." You can understand it at a glance. Don't get those colorful PDFs with dozens of pages. Who has time to flip through dozens of pages to find your own evacuation route if there is a real fire? Good text can be printed on a card and inserted into a work card or posted on the wall next to the work station.

Don't mess around with generic templates. Seriously, I've seen this joke too many times.

The last and most easily overlooked step is dynamic iteration. Don’t just lock it in a cupboard and collect dust after editing it. I saw a startup company’s emergency guide that was from three years ago. At that time, the company only had 20 people, but now it has more than 200 people. The evacuation route is still the same as the original small office. If something happens, you will have to step on it. After every drill and every emergency incident, the guidelines must be updated. For example, during the last fire drill in the industrial park, it was found that the fire exit in Building 3 was blocked by express delivery and blocked for 3 minutes during the evacuation. Then, "all fire exit obstacles should be checked within 24 hours after each drill, and the administration department is responsible for updating the evacuation route map" was added to the guide.

In fact, after all is said and done, are there any absolute standard steps for compiling an emergency guide? The core point is that you have to really think about using it when something goes wrong, rather than dealing with inspections from superiors. I have seen too many companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on consulting firms to compile dozens of pages of beautiful guides, only to find that when problems arise they can’t even find them. That is a waste of effort.