The Business Continuity Institute has released the latest edition of its annual Emergency Communications Report, which finds that preserving physical security and safety of employees is the greatest concern for business continuity and resilience professionals, especially, when it comes to producing emergency communications plans.
The report, supported by Everbridge, is based on 570 survey responses from 70 countries.
Other key findings include:
- The use of emergency communications plans rose from 84 percent to 86 percent this year.
- Organizations are increasingly concerned about communicating with a mobile workforce. 40 percent of organizations reported having more than 100 staff who travel overseas. 34 percent considered the countries that their staff travel to as high-risk areas.
- The human factor remains pivotal to the success of emergency communications plans. Building skills and raising awareness of emergency communications are central in implementing effective plans during a disruption. 75 percent of respondents include emergency communications plans in their training and education plans.
- Business continuity professionals have a central role in managing emergency communications, but they need to collaborate with other resilience disciplines.
- Emergency communications are commonly triggered by: weather related incidents (54 percent); power outages (39 percent); IT outages (39 percent); natural disasters (33 percent); security-related incidents (28 percent).
- The top methods used for emergency communications are: internal email (88 percent); text message / SMS (71 percent); manual call trees (59 percent); emergency communications software (49 percent); crisis telephone lines (42 percent).
Download a full copy of the report from here (registration required).
