Have You Considered Your Company’s Emergency Policies and Procedures?

Of all the different kinds of policies and procedures, covering all different kinds of events or situations, the one that many businesses often ignore, is the necessity to have a plan of action in the event of an emergency. Not having policies and procedures in an emergency, can paralyze your business, and keep it from doing the things that it has to do to stay afloat during a difficult situation.

Where to Put Them?

Your emergency policies can be done one of two ways.

The first way is to have a completely separate policy that covers emergencies, just as you might have separate policies on working from home, or IT usage, or on reporting harassment in the workplace.

The second way is that emergency procedures can be incorporated in and as a part of your existing corporate documents—for example, having your existing bylaws or management agreement, have the proper provisions in it to account for emergencies.

Individual and Large Scale

Your emergency policies, wherever and however you do them, should also account for two kinds of emergencies.

One kind, is where someone in the office who is of vital importance, is incapacitated or unavailable.

If the CEO handles all the contracts and signs all the agreements and makes all the hiring decisions and manages staff and contractors, and that person ends up in a hospital…your company now has an emergency, because there’s nobody else who can or who has the authority to do those things.

The other kind of emergency is outside emergencies. These are what you might guess they are—pandemics, weather emergencies, building collapses, civil unrest and other less-than-anticipated events.

These outside emergencies can limit people’s availability. If those people vote—say, on a board of directors—yoru emergency procedures should have some way for the Board or committee to transact business, in the absence of a full board or committee.

Concentrating Power

Emergency procedures tend to take away your normal “democratic” form of decision-making which may involve various officers or perhaps the voting of a board of directors or the chain of command in management, and instead, temporarily delegates this authority to one or a small group of people.

The emergency procedures can give this person the authority to do almost anything, or it can limit him or her to performing only the basic functions necessary during the emergency (for example, making sure company property is safe and secured, signing and approving vital contracts, or contacting employees to get them to work).

What is an Emergency?

Your emergency procedures should define, as accurately as possible, when there is an emergency, so there is no dispute about when the emergency procedures “kick in.” They also should state when the emergency is over (at least, for the business’ purposes), and thus, when normal business operations can resume.

Call our Fort Lauderdale business litigation lawyers at Sweeney Law P.A. at 954-440-3993 for help with your business’ corporate documents.

Sources:

cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-101/emrgact/files/emrgact.pdf

osha.gov/emergency-preparedness/getting-started