This year you've committed to moving away from the status quo – to change.
You're determined to empower your staff with the ability to communicate effectively.
And you are committed to getting the information you need to understand your operation fully.
Generally, we'd tell you why it's essential to institute best practices and then show you how to put them into practice.
Today is different.
We're going to show you how to put the process - infrastructure - in place first.
It's truly the first step in giving your team purpose.
Refine Your Process to Give Your Incident Management Purpose
How is your incident management system currently being utilized?
What's your current structure?
Better yet, do you even have an infrastructure for optimum management, communication, and order?
At this point, if you don't have something in place – anything – you're not getting the crucial data you and your team need to improve your processes and protocols continuously.
Logging in incidents is only one piece of the puzzle.
Let's polish your incident management infrastructure so that you can achieve Proactive Operations.
Defining Your Infrastructure
Giving your staff the ability to communicate effectively is the goal of developing a solid foundation.
You'll then understand why your infrastructure is so vital to the success of your incident management process.
Your new infrastructure will include all personnel and departments where an incident could potentially affect.
An Operations Center for Front-of-House Personnel
This is where you'll control the whole show on an event day.
You and your front-of-house staff will put up shop in a location that'll give them a visual of the entire property – full awareness.
Your front-of-house department representatives include:
- Customer Service
- Police
- Fire Rescue
- Event Security
- Parking Operations
Every department representative needs to have the ability to view and manage their own department's incident management dispatch queue within the operations center.
All incidents coming into your system, and their associated details, should be viewable and manageable by all departments simultaneously.
Segmenting dispatch screens will allow your reps to focus on their incidents while the central dispatcher can maintain focus on the overall event.
An Operations Center for Back-of-House Personnel
The back-of-house operations center is set up separately to mitigate confusion for departments, enhancing effective communication.
The back of house department representatives include:
- Technology
- Engineering/Facility Maintenance
- Housekeeping
- Concessions
Having two operations centers gives you the ability to create incident records for 'Back-of-House' personnel and 'Front-of-House' incidents effortlessly into your incident management system.
You remove all communication barriers that will affect your incident management process.
Real-Time Data and Communication is Your Immediate Result
The days of dispatched incidents, no status, no status, and no status can finally lay to rest.
With your new infrastructure in place, you have the right communication lines open.
You've improved your process with instant communication, multiple users in multiple locations talking to each other, and department segmentation inclusive of the organization and purpose your operation needs.
Now, the status of your property's incidents from "Dispatched," "On Scene," to "Closed" will be efficiently record the details into your incident management system.
Your real-time data is the effect of real-time communication.
Now we'll show you the result of having order through the confusion.
Improved Response Times Based on Real Data
You can measure and improve your response times with an operational process.
You're getting all the data you need because it's being documented for your analysis.
You can seamlessly analyze and create a benchmark for what an adequate response time to an incident is.
- How long does it take to receive a call?
- How long does it take to dispatch the incident?
- How long does it take to get on the scene of the incident?
How long does it take to receive a call?
From the time it takes your customers to identify an incident, send a text message via your text messaging software, request assistance, your staff to report an incident via a hand-held mobile device to your operations center.
How long does it take to dispatch the incident?
For instance, a call for a fight comes in. It's determined there's a blood spill on the scene; therefore, the operations center must notify police, fire rescue and notify housekeeping to bring protective gloves for this incident.
How long does it take to get on the scene of the incident?
From the moment the incident is dispatched to all personnel, you can now effectively determine each associated department's length of time to arrive on the scene from their current locations.
Over to You
Combined with your new structure and process, you can now dive into the vital questions to help you understand appropriate response times and your operation's effectiveness. This information is what you need to enhance your incident management process.
Before your new infrastructure, your response time to an injury due to a wet spill is seven minutes. Now, your response time to the same type of incident radically decreases to three minutes at your property.
That's results, and this is all because you've built an infrastructure for your operation, allowing you to record comprehensive documentation, communicate it, analyze it, and then use it to strengthen your operation even more.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.
