Employee Alert System Speed

Posted by Dave Burr on January 5, 2019
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We are often asked the question by our AMG Alerts customers and prospects “How quickly will all of our people receive the message once we launch it?”

Some companies answer this question by giving statistics about the throughput of their system, whether it’s text, email, voice, etc.  Such a reply is misleading. The correct answer to that question is “whenever the message becomes available to the recipient”

Yes, front-end system performance is important, but it really isn’t the determining factor in recipients’ getting the message. In the case of text messaging, carrier networks have to get the messages to devices. The device needs to be available to the network, the network can’t be overloaded with data, and the device must be in the possession of the recipient. So, applying common sense, “all” recipients might not get the message for minutes, hours, or days.

Voice messaging has variables too. A power outage may render landline phones useless, to a significant degree. And if you are sending to a wireless device, you have the same issues as mentioned above.

If you are ringing landline phones in an office environment, normally there isn’t enough bandwidth available to the local equipment to actually ring every extension at the same time. In many cases, less than half of the extensions can be in use at any given time, so an automated system receives busy signals and has to keep trying at various intervals.

In any case, about half of voice calls result in a voicemail being left, so of course the recipient must first discover and listen to the voicemail.

In the case of email, it has to have not gone to spam, the email has to be checked, and the message must be noticed and read.

Common sense? For the most part, yes. What it means is that if people need to be informed of something quickly, it usually means that you need to use as many modes as possible, and a lot needs to go right. Fortunately, most messages sent do not need to be received in seconds, and notification systems largely fulfill their promise, as a whole. But remember that it is what happens downstream that counts.

Employee Notification System Reporting

Posted by Dave Burr on September 1, 2018
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Most notifications to employees are broadcast in nature, meaning that there is no particular need for the employee to “respond” per se. You just need to get information into their hands. At least 98% of messages sent through our AMG Alerts application are of the “broadcast” variety. No response back to the administrator is required.

That said, most customers do care about the effectiveness of their broadcast. Did the system work? Do I have some bad phone numbers or emails in my database? Where are the problems that might need to be corrected for next time?

Many companies at least do an occasional “test” wherein they send something through the system that says “Let me know if you received this.” This method is problematic in two significant ways. First a proper employee notification system will use multiple modes, either all at once or to individual employees based on their preferences. So how should a reply be initiated for the message that I receive? This information is virtually always left out of the message, so people reply to the email, or attempt to SMS back, or listen to a message on voicemail and then say “now what?” The administrator will get some acknowledgements, somehow, but probably miss others.

Second, even if the above were not an issue at all, not everyone will comply. What does it mean when you get, say, 73% confirmation? Not much. All it means is that at least that percentage received the message, but the actual number is likely much higher. What do you do with that information?

We believe in “passive” reporting, wherein you can look at a broadcast after the fact and see which numbers are bad for SMS and voice, which emails were bounced back,  who may have had a spurious SMS issue, or which voice calls went to voicemail vs. being answered live. With this type of reporting, employees don’t have to do anything, and it can be a part of every broadcast, so you know if new problems creep in as you add new recipients.

We always suggest that people choose a system that has both specific reply capability as well as a “passive” reporting system where technology does the work of looking into possible communications issues.

Text Alert Systems for Business

Posted by Dave Burr on July 7, 2018
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It’s common for managers to begin their employee alert system deployment with a search for text alert systems. After all, it is the most popular mode, That’s how most of our customers find us. However, text alone will not cover every person not every scenario. First, not everyone has access to SMS. Given that, you need to have your bases covered with other modes. There are accessibility issues that  may be better covered with Voice of Email.

Also, consider our article “Spamming via SMS“. Yes, this is a real thing! You may have a legitimate issue that needs to be highlighted that is not quite important enough to bother 250 people who might be on vacation, in heavy traffic, or at the dinner table. This is where email is important. When we point that out, we often hear that “we already have that for the office, and most of the people out in the shop don’t have email addresses” Well of course they do, and they need to be collected as part of system deployment. Not only that, a good percentage of AMG Alerts customers use our system occasionally to broadcast information about outages of their email systems, so collection of everyone’s personal email address is always beneficial, as a good system can toggle back and forth between business and personal email.

Therefore, an adequate system should include comprehensive email, text, and voice. We add web to that, because there are instances where an employee may feel he/she should have received a message and has not, and thus becomes anxious. His they are able to check for messages on demand, that problem is averted.

We always suggest that ALL modes need to be carefully considered at the outset. Nobody wants to have to “start over” in their deployment of an employee alert system.

Spamming via SMS

Posted by Dave Burr on March 15, 2018
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What is Spam? Well, we all know the definition, right? It is that gigantic slug of nonsense emails that you delete every day, leaving the one percent valuable stuff (which ultimately turns out the be more like a half a percent).

Broadly-interpreted, though, Spam is *any* unwanted message. And it can come to you via a variety of media, including landline telephone, social media, and (gulp) even via your own personal device that you carry everywhere, via telephone or even text.

What many people don’t always consider (occasionally even our own AMG Alerts customers),  is that when it comes to messaging personal devices, the Spam designation is highly contextual. When any message arrives at an inopportune time, it can be judged harshly. When the message has obvious benefit for the recipient, which the vast majority would, there is normally little issue. But what if, say, the president of the company decides, out of the blue, to send employees his “thought of the day”? How valuable is such a thing when you are driving, sitting down to dinner with your family, asleep, or engaged in some activity on your time and yours alone.

When access to the wireless network and device usage is paid for by the sender (the company), there are few restrictions. But wireless carriers are extremely sensitive to complaints by private account holders about “abuse”, and since the definition of that term for any individual can change from minute-to-minute, all messaging should have a certain level of scrutiny.

We counsel our customers to follow opt-in rules that we provide, which should include not only opt-out instructions,and other information, but an internal contact for questions about whatever mass-texting program you have in place. Our system provides tools for reminding employees that that the system is there (in cases where the use is infrequent) and allowing them to review their preferences and take themselves out if needed.

At the end of the day, there should be an understanding and a level of trust between the sender and the recipients about how the system will be used and what to expect. Keep an open channel with them about how the program is going, and definitely follow the “Do unto others” philosophy as it applies to message sending.

 

 

If You See Something, Say Something

Posted by Dave Burr on February 3, 2018
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The missile alert mishap in Hawaii which occurred in January 2018 taught many lessons. We will touch on a few of them in future articles. We hope that one takeaway is the need for training on the part of people with the capacity to cause mass panic. Sounds pretty obvious, right? Not to everyone. We have been pushing back against the notion, fostered in a few small circles, that each individual employee or participant in an organization have the ability to launch mass alerts.

This really happened: A potential customer, supposedly armed with “consultants” on the conference call, stated, “if an employee sees what he thinks is the barrel of a rifle, he should be able to send that information immediately to all employees.” I suggested that such information should be vetted in order to:

  1. determine what is actually happening
  2. determine what to communicate and to whom in order to get the most positive outcome. Yelling at the top of your lungs isn’t very constructive. It wasn’t in Hawaii

We will be writing more about “active shooter” situations and protocols, which account for a negligible percentage of mass alert applications (and frankly shouldn’t rely so much on various outside networks provided by wireless carriers.)

It’s clear that many people believe that speed is the most important element in employee notification. However, getting proper information to the proper people is what’s important. That responsibility should be given to the few who are trained to do it. The “if you see something” campaign does not suggest at all that each individual should be provided with an air raid siren.

That said, each person SHOULD have the ability to initiate a mass notification. And that starts with each person knowing who to contact and how, with minimal delays. There aren’t that many situations where an employee notification system is used where minutes count. But let’s imagine that they do. Do your employees know to whom to “say something” if they have a concern? Who are the proper point people? Organizations almost always fall down on that basic element. Let’s start there. Once that is done, everything starts falling into place because you can get from information source to properly generated mass alert very quickly.

Shop Floor Employees – Don’t Leave Them Out!

Posted by Dave Burr on December 29, 2017
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One challenge that many of our AMG Alerts customers face is the spotty availability of some of the more valuable contact information for non-office employees, usually defined as those who don’t have company-provided emails. With email, the rollout of an employee alert system is truly a piece of cake because you can include signup links. Even if an administrator wants to use another method to populate the alert system database, their HRIS data often contains more contact information (i.e. mobile versus home landlines, personal emails) for office employees than those on the plant floor.

We do see companies give up on the idea of 100% inclusion. They use the alert system to get to a certain level and then rely on front-line management for “last mile” communication. Obviously this compromises effectiveness.

Statistics show that the vast majority of employees, at any level, do have access to email. Granted, in some cases, use may be spotty, but if they are aware of the purpose of the data collection campaign, they will provide it make a special effort to monitor it during the system rollout. Of course while the are providing that, they can provide the other data for use in the alert system, assuming the administrator plans centralized entry of all the data.

One creative thing that some customers have done is provide centralized “kiosks” so that employees can access our portal(s) to enter their information. These are simply web-enabled desktops located in strategic places such as lunchrooms and other common areas. Employees can, over the course of several days, enter in all the necessary data including their preferences.  A “campaign” such as this also highlights the importance of the system, which is another major benefit.

Oh, the Possibilities!: Employee Alert System Uses

Posted by Dave Burr on June 23, 2017
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Most of our would-be AMG Alerts customers come to us with a specific purpose in mind, often spurred on by a recent event. But when you consider the myriad uses for an employee notification system, it’s a wonder that any organization has survived without one — at least without a steady level of pain over a period of years.

Here are a few examples that are real-life. We see them every day:

  • Weather-related messaging. Okay, this is the granddaddy of them all but we have seen systems underutilized here
  • IT systems-related issues. This is the second most popular use. Employees are informed of email/phone/special information application outages and their resolutions
  • Calling in personnel to handle a shortfall
  • Calling off personnel – i.e. cancelling a shift
  • Road closings and other local events that might impede travel to (or away from) the facility
  • Security situations, not only the unlikely “active shooter” scenario, but more likely issues such as suspicious persons or police activity
  • Informing about what is NOT an emergency – i.e. explaining smoke, suspicious odors, emergency vehicles in proximity, loud noises in the area, etc. that have no impact on safety or security but cause speculation and uncertainty
  • Facilities issues and expected resolutions, including for power outages, shut-off water, HVAC problems, emergency repairs, parking lot maintenance, etc.
  • Conducting drills
  • Alerting for unplanned conference calls. Although AMG Alerts has its own integrated conferencing with alerting, many customers use their own – but they use the notification system to grab people in emergencies and direct them to the call
  • Substance-abuse testing. If the employee notification system can target specific individuals, it can be used to alert them (in multiple modes) as to the need to report
  • Reminders about important organizational events
  • Emergency guidance about handling unforeseen events, i.e. “Please to do not talk to the media”. “Report sightings to manager”, etc.
  • Dealing with local health issues. This is one we unfortunately may see with increasing frequency, and maintaining employees or groups of them from entering or leaving an area might be an essential activity

If you’ve been managing an organization for a while, you’ll see some familiar concepts above. And we will undoubtedly be adding to this list as we see equally compelling uses.

Text Alert System – Public vs. Private Systems

Posted by Dave Burr on March 29, 2017
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In some of our articles regarding employee notification systems and school notification systems, we mention the benefit of a “private” notification system without much clarification.

There are three basic categories of notification system:

Public: These are the government sponsored programs where federal, state, and sometimes local government works with telephone and wireless companies to provide types of warnings, such as Amber Alerts,  to devices. Normally the operating system allows opt-in or -out of these notifications.

Corporate-sponsored: Most people are familiar with, say, television stations scrolling school and sometimes company closures along the bottom of the screen. While to some degree there is “serving of the public interest”, these are basically marketing programs designed to enhance viewership. Similarly, many media outlets allow you to text a keyword to a short code to receive some sort of alert, often related to weather but other messages could be piggybacked along with those. The business concept behind those offerings is to build awareness of and loyalty to the provider of the messages, and sometimes to sell other goods and services.

Private: These are the mass notification systems that YOU control. Obviously they are essential because while a corporate-sponsored system might alert you to the fact that there is a snowstorm in the area, you need a private system to provide whatever details apply specifically to your organization.  And the fact is that the vast majority of notifications that are sent via a private system like AMG Alerts do not deal specifically with anything weather-related (at least in a macro sense) but instead issues that are unforeseen:  security issues, system failures, and other localized phenomena.

Certainly there is a place for all three layers because they serve different purposes.

 

Employee Notification Systems – In-Office Notification Considerations

Posted by Dave Burr on January 1, 2017
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We often see customers or potential customers concerned that they be able to ring every extension in the office in order to contact their employees about some critical issue. Some also believe that all extensions ring simultaneously, or nearly so. There are practical issues in play that should cause some to at least “de-emphasize” this approach to emergency communication.

First, most inter-office systems of any significant size actually do not have the bandwidth for every extension to be used at the same time. What happens then is that an automated IVR system encountering a busy or dead air or no answer may (or may not depending on the system) retry on a set interval, and in few cases would or should that interval be “immediate.” During this time, physical communication, or at the very least, behavior, on the part of in-office employees will take place that makes a callback at some later time, even if it is 5 minutes, moot.

For extensions in use, usually the message goes right to voicemail, and again, before the message is actually listened to by the employee, they already get the information from others.

Add to this the real potential that the office phone system would be the first thing to become completely inoperative in a power failure, and ultimately, the key to getting the word out within an office is actual word-of mouth spawned by a notification via wireless devices (whether it is Voice or Text).  Look at your own office – what percentage of employees being actually being told about something via an automated system would be required before action would occur?  10%? 20%? You almost certainly wouldn’t need much more than that.

Voice notification to landlines is most often used in cases where you don’t have the incredible communication leverage that an office situation provides, and is less likely to be bogged down or inoperable than would an office system in an emergency.  Many AMG Alerts customers like the option to call home landline phones depending on the situation, just to extend the possibility that the employee gets the information. Information is so easy to distribute among in-office employees, and the challenge most of our customers face is getting at people who are NOT sitting across the the room from them or in the next cubicle.

Employee Notification System Database Planning

Posted by Dave Burr on October 26, 2016
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In a past post we spoke about the value of simplicity in the data structure. Because we see our AMG Alerts customers over-complicating their databases all the time, and it’s been a while, I will touch on this again.

When an organization considers how to split up the population for selective notification (assuming that it’s even necessary), we see evidence the the first question they ask is “How can I split everyone into hierarchies and groups?” There is further evidence that that organizations look to their HRIS database and see how it may be broken out there. But the HRIS is used for a different purpose, so that shouldn’t determine the setup of the notification system.

And unfortunately we also see customers making it as complicated as our system will allow, without regard to whether such minute groupings would ever be used as part of a “response” to a situation.

In mass notification, the “old saying” (the quotes are there because actually we just made this up ourselves) is: “It’s almost always better to inform too many people than too few.” That means that if you break up your database into tiny slivers, your maintenance requirements can grow exponentially. Try not to create a system where just because Joe Tucker is now Salaried instead of Hourly, or he moved from second shift to first shift, he now is not going to get the message because his profile within the notification system hasn’t been updated. Most of the time you can cover subgroups with the message text. Consider blowing away the “shift” subgroup and just send to all Plant employees, “second shift is cancelled tonight.” And there are very few emergencies where you’d send a message to only the people that are Salaried.

Yes, of course there are some good reasons to break up the database. You might need to send sensitive information to the Executive Team that need not be shared with everyone. You might have a very large population and want to minimize messaging costs. Or maybe you send messages so often that you’d get push-back from the “unaffected” portion of the population.

Erring on the side of simplicity, however, is a good policy. Consider REALISTIC scenarios about how you might want to selectively send, and then set up the system that way. Of you start with complexity, the person launching the notification might start using that complexity and you’ll ultimately end up in the “notified ‘too few'” category. If you start with simplicity, you won’t have the “too few” issue problem. You can always break up your database further as you run into realistic scenarios where that is needed.