Looking at a study on emergency preparedness at U.S. schools
A big part of crisis management is knowing the items your stakeholders care most about. A perfect example of this is the importance of safety on school campuses. Parents care about it, students care about it, and employees care about it. In other words, campus safety should be a big deal.
Problem is, according to a recent study from safety and security consultants Margolis Healy, schools are still not doing everything they could to protect against safety threats. Key findings of the study include:
- While an admirable 86% of institutions have developed an emergency operations plan, only 54.7% conducted a hazard and vulnerability audit to actually identify the dangers they can expect to face.
- A full quarter of respondents indicated they have never conducted any type of active shooter exercise on campus.
- 31% of participants responded that their institution does not have any staff dedicated to emergency preparedness efforts.
- Less than half of those surveyed conduct post-event reviews evaluating the effectiveness of plans and addressing needed changes.
It’s an encouraging improvement from what we were seeing five years ago, but there are still widespread gaps in both preparedness and actual ability to react in many fields. Additionally, we have to note that such studies, relying on data from those surveyed, tend to understate the scope of the problem areas.
The BCM Blogging Team
www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com