Climate Resilience and Emergency Training in the Modern Workplace
Extreme weather is no longer a rare disruption. In the UK, climate-related events such as flooding, heatwaves, storms and wildfires are not only more frequent but also more intense. And yet, emergency training in many organisations still follows the same assumptions it did a decade ago.
We’ve planned for building evacuations, fire drills, and severe snow, but what about evacuating lone workers from rural flood zones? Or supporting heat-stressed logistics staff during a red warning?
The reality is that climate change isn’t a theoretical future problem. It’s reshaping today’s risk landscape, and our emergency planning needs to catch up.
Climate Risk Is Now a Workplace Issue
In its latest analysis, the UK Met Office confirmed that 2023 was one of the UK’s warmest and wettest years on record. The number of “extreme heat days” in the UK has doubled in just 30 years, while floods now affect approximately 1 in 6 properties.
Meanwhile, the UK Climate Change Committee warns that public infrastructure, business continuity, and supply chains remain critically underprepared for the new normal.
For safety professionals, this isn’t a problem to defer to facilities or operations. It’s a workforce safety challenge and it demands a clear, agile response.
Why Traditional Emergency Training Is No Longer Enough
Many emergency procedures were built for static, centralised workforces. But today’s working models are more distributed than ever, with field engineers, lone workers, mobile carers and logistics personnel operating across diverse environments.
Climate emergencies, meanwhile, do not follow timetables. Flash floods don’t wait for morning briefings. Wildfires, like those experienced in the UK’s 2022 summer heatwave, can shift directions in hours.
If your organisation still relies on paper-based emergency protocols, ad hoc phone chains for communication, annual training with no scenario updates or one-size-fits-all alerts, then your resilience is already behind the curve.
Embedding Climate-Aware Safety Thinking
So what should better look like?
- Dynamic response planning
Training should reflect the climate realities of your region and workforce. For example, are lone workers in flood-prone areas trained to respond to localised weather threats? Do your incident protocols include wildfires or extreme heat exposure? - Scenario-specific simulations
Move beyond the generic fire drill. Incorporate scenario-based exercises for heat exhaustion, vehicle entrapment due to landslides, or shelter-in-place strategies during air quality alerts. - Live visibility and real-time communication
Platforms like Locate Global enable leaders to track team locations against live risk zones (e.g. flood alerts, storm paths), deliver targeted warnings, and escalate instantly if someone is in danger. - Clear ownership of weather-related escalation
Too often, decisions about evacuation or altered working conditions are left vague. Assign clear thresholds, decision-makers, and communication roles so there’s no ambiguity when a warning is issued.
Resilience as a Leadership Issue
Adapting to climate-related risk isn’t just an operational upgrade—it’s a matter of leadership accountability.
When staff face unpredictable, weather-related danger, the question becomes: Did leadership anticipate this? Were systems in place? Were people trained, informed, and visible when it mattered most?
Inaction can quickly become reputational damage. And in some cases, even legal exposure.
By contrast, organisations that plan for the unpredictable—those that empower staff with tools, protocols, and real-time support—position themselves not just as prepared, but trusted.
What’s Next for Emergency Preparedness?
Emergency training must now be treated as a living, adaptive process, not a once-a-year compliance exercise. Climate risk is accelerating. So too must our planning, our tools, and our mindset.
A more resilient future starts by admitting that the models of the past no longer apply. The challenge is not whether we recognise this, but whether we act.
