Your staff has been hired.
You have supervisors, managers, team leads, or all the above.
You have people that are professionally trained and ready to deliver a first-class experience for your customers.
Right?
On the other hand, there’s a good chance that’s not even close to being true.
How do you know the difference?
Are you able to adequately measure whether your team is ready or even able to execute your processes when it’s time?
Hard truth: you’re teaching your staff a lot of information just before they begin working a full shift.
They need to be able to protect your customers, your property, and anyone else.
That’s a huge responsibility.
Do you currently train them and then have the expectation that they’ll know what they’re doing or be able to wing it well enough for no one to notice the difference?
If so, you’re setting your operation up for disaster.
Here’s how:
Your staff cannot remember every aspect of your emergency management plan or protocols immediately following their training curriculum.
In fact, field-tested research shows that it takes someone about 20 hours of acting out a single skill before they’ve learned it enough to perform without assistance.
Even worse, they’re going to miss things in the heat of the moment.
What happens when you need them trained up for your next event tomorrow, or you’re short staffed and need a warm body to fill a role now?
Your staff’s inability to effectively execute protocols to handle according to your operational requirements is how your incident management might be broken.
Expecting your staff to execute strictly from memory leads to:
- Incident escalations
- Incidents getting missed
- People getting unnecessarily injured
- Problems with tracking accountability
- Potential legal cases
- Stress!
It’s time for a solution. Keep reading to learn how to fix it.
HOW TO FIX YOUR INCIDENT MANAGEMENT
Do you rely on your staff to remember all their training in order to perform their job to the level that you expect?
That’s a sure-fire way of hindering your operation.
You’re a professional running a professional operation.
So, let’s put the right solution in your hands – in your team’s hands for that matter.
You need to employ mobile devices for your frontline staff to report incidents, communicate with teammates, and be able to execute protocols-to-handle effectively.
You need them to eliminate the stress of having to remember.
We hear about this often.
You’ve trained your staff on a lengthy list of defined processes, procedures, and protocols to handle, but when it comes time to execute, team reverts to reactive methods.
The result, issues, and incidents slip through the cracks.
When they’re on and required to act, it can be a scary experience for your staff, even if they’re trained.
But, when you put mobile devices into their hands, you instantly reduce their fear of being able to execute because they have a mechanism to help them maximize their effectiveness.
Now, you’ve provided them the ability to enter an incident into their mobile device easily.
Your operations center will see it while the frontline staff simultaneously receives the protocols to handle that incident.
The process to handle the incident has already been communicated, and all appropriate personnel can quickly respond.
Efficiency and effectiveness are how you save lives.
You’re also guaranteeing a way for you to track accountability.
How?
The protocols to handle are in your incident management system for each associated incident type.
The rules are clear and easy for staff to follow.
When staff inputs the incident, the protocols populate for them to execute and then you can track whether things are being done according to your standards.
- Fewer questions
- Fewer errors
- No excuses
How’s that for Proactive Operations?
But before arming your staff with mobile devices, you need protocols.
Do you have those ready?
PROTOCOLS-TO-HANDLE YOU CAN USE
We understand that developing protocols to handle can be tricky when starting from nothing or without a robust operational framework in place.
If you’ve never used an incident management system or don’t have an emergency management plan in place, the challenge is even more significant.
Being the helpful friends that we are, we’ve got your jumpstart covered.
Here are a few examples of protocols-to-handle that’d be valuable for staff using mobile devices.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, and these aren’t.
You only need to give your staff the resources to do their job effectively.
That’s all.
Allergic Reaction:
- Call Paramedics immediately.
- Isolate the substance that caused the reaction.
- Check victim for identification if unconscious.
- Collect info details from witnesses.
Suspicious Bag or Package:
- Do not touch, move or disturb any suspicious object you feel might be a bomb.
- Keep people away from the area where the suspicious object is and call the Chief of Police.
- Be sure to include a description of the object and its location when reporting.
- Take a picture of the suspicious object.
Location, Field, and Court Storming:
- Create a safety wall for essential
- Get all parties off the floor and out of the way.
Location Specific Incidents:
For certain locations that incidents could possibly occur outside of normal property operations, notify the head of that location rather than having them find out later when they come in the next morning.
This eliminates miscommunication and the chances of an upset manager.
It’s an ethical way to keep the peace and keep everyone in the loop.
You will need to manually do this if you don’t use a progressive incident management system that allows you to automate this action based on incident location.
- Box Office: Contact the Box Office Manager
- VIP Areas: Contact the Director of Premium Services
- Press Workroom: Contact the Director of Communications
OVER TO YOU
Putting mobile devices in the hands of your frontline staff is a smart way to fix your staff’s inability to execute effectively.
Innovative software solutions help them handle complex incidents that arise at your property with their own little slice of Proactive Operations.
They look good. You’re happy. And you look good to your boss.
So, will you start using mobile devices to fix this problem for your operation before something else breaks?
Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.
