Considerations for Protecting their Employees During Periods of Unrest

With a recent rise in civil unrest across the globe, workplaces face potential new dangers from the riots and looting that have unfortunately accompanied some of the peaceful protests. There are several issues that employers need to consider for protecting their employees during these situations.

Monitoring
Ensure your employees are safe and protected with regular check-ins and close monitoring in affected areas. Front-line employees should also be reporting back to stakeholders, advising on ongoing situations so that important decisions related to workplace safety, opening or not, and staffing can be made timely.

Communication
Maintaining communication with your workforce during a potential crisis should be a top priority — not just with your managers, but the entire workforce. Communication needs to be consistent, clear and transparent. Situations can change quickly, so it is vital to have a consistent communication plan, that is adaptable to different scenarios.

Travel to work
Massive protests can make travelling to and from work difficult with street and highway closures, and public transportation being overwhelmed or closed. Employers need to be mindful of how this impacts the ability of their workforce to get to work, and of their duty of care requirements.

Curfews
Several cities have imposed curfews during times of civil unrest. When this happens, companies should make sure facilities are prepared and can provide time for workers to get home before the start of the curfew.

Workforce wellbeing
Reminding employees of the benefits and resources available to assist them is beneficial in high-stress periods. Offering an employee assistance program can be of particular interest.

Prepare for the worst
Companies need to have a policy on what to do if the worst case happens. What should your employees do to protect their safety? How should they respond? These policies need to be developed well in advance, and employees trained on the proper course of action.

Sometimes the safest option for your employees is to close the business early to avoid it being open during protests or times of civil disobedience, however, there are technology solutions that aid your organisations incident management capabilities. The Locate Global platform enables mass communication, workforce visibility and emergency response escalations in one simple and easy-to-use cloud-based platform.

Visit www.locate.global for more information.