Some of our potential AMG Alerts employee notification customers have expressed that, as a matter of policy, they feel it is not necessary to issue “all clear” alerts indicating the resolution of a situation. This may be due to an effort to save a few dollars, or to not “bother” people.

Our view is that in most cases, it needs to be done, but certainly not always.

If the notification indicates a situation where a disruption is occurring and will continue until an all clear is issued, make sure you do it. A common one is an IT system failure. If the “ASCE System” is down, make sure you issue an all clear when it’s back up because otherwise employees will be either not doing their work on an otherwise functional system, or pinging the system constantly to see if it is back up. This is a waste of resources that generally far exceeds the cost of a broadcast message.

Another common situation is safety related – bomb scares, intruders, etc. You need to call the situation clear otherwise it is too disruptive to the organization.

Weather alerts are a mixed bag. It is generally not necessary to issue an all clear because employees can judge when the situation has passed. Some companies might feel that there is some legal liability incurred by telling employees that there is no remaining danger with something as unpredictable as weather.  In tornado alley, for example, the sirens go off to alert you to danger, but they don’t tell you that everything is safe again. This sets a precedent in these areas.

The exception to that is, again, when the warning results in a disruption. If there is a policy in place where construction workers leave a work site when they receive a high wind warning, you have to let them know when, per your policy, it is safe to return. If a tornado warning causes employees to retreat to a safe area where they can no longer assess the weather situation on their own, you’ll need to help them with that.

Other, more mundane notifications generally don’t require an all clear. If the power is out in a commercial real estate situation, for example, you may or may not issue an all clear depending on what you believe your tenants to be doing as a result. Just like parking lot repaving or air conditioner repair, it is usually obvious when then situation is resolved.

“Employees are like people.”

Yes, I did hear someone say this once. And they are right! People tend to go their own direction based on their own instincts and conditioning. Yes, if someone works for you, you can make certain “demands”, but that only will take you so far.

In our implementations of AMG Alerts among our corporate customers, there is often a concern about how all the contact profiles will be collected. While some companies have significant contact information and can upload it into our system (perhaps as an initial “seeding” step), often, it’s more effective if the employee accesses our system directly to establish certain preferences.

So how do you establish buy-in and get maximum participation?

1)      Set up the system correctly.  Don’t make the people who DO jump into it have to go back and input information you forgot to collect

2)      Communicate effectively. Beyond  “we have this new notification system”, tell everyone what it is for, how often they can expect to get messages and when you will and WON’T use it. And if you can point to one or two example of when it would have come in handy, be sure to do that! Most of our AMG Alerts customers come to us because they have more than one great example of when it would have come in handy!

3)      Establish deadlines for sign-up based on realistic goals. Publish the first one. Maybe it’s a week or so out. Then go back out and publish the next one, giving just a few days.

4)      Be patient. If you don’t have 100% participation, all it takes is the first “situation” to occur where the system gets used. You’ll pick up the stragglers at that time.

We’ve never had an employer fail to be successful in implementing the system – even before the emergency occurs, because our customers have been creative thinkers. And of course once it’s used once, everyone else falls into place.