When was the last time you participated in a fire drill?
I mean a real one. The alarm sounds, everyone stops what they’re doing, exits the building, and meets at the designated location. We did these several times a year in school. We knew the sound of the alarm, which door to use, where to gather, and that someone would be counting heads. That routine does not always carry over into the workplace.
A few weeks ago, tornado sirens sounded in Naperville while several members of our team were working in the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce (NACC) office. Our office sits on the third floor of a building lined with windowed conference rooms and workspaces. When the sirens went off, our team reacted and moved to a safer location, but it was not something we had practiced together.
Like many organizations, NACC has a detailed Emergency Action Plan, originally created as part of our U.S. Chamber of Commerce accreditation process. It covers severe weather, evacuations, power outages, and other emergencies. It’s thorough and documented, and until that day, it had mostly just been sitting in a file. Having a great plan on paper is only the first step. The real goal is for everyone to know what to do without having to guess or figure it out on the fly.
I saw that same gap play out somewhere else that same day. While the sirens were still going off, I was messaging a friend who was shopping elsewhere in Chicagoland. She was inside a retail store at the time, and everyone just stood around looking at one another. The employees scrambled to figure out what to do, searching for corporate policy while customers waited. Finally, my friend spoke up: “Can you just let all of us into the back room?”
There’s a reason we did drills in school, and there’s a reason we should bring them into the workplace. Schools, hospitals, and many other institutions regularly practice what to do during fires, tornadoes, workplace violence, power outages, and other emergencies, so people can rely on muscle memory when it matters most. That kind of preparation is something we, as employees, may need to advocate for, and, as managers, have a responsibility to provide.
Ask yourself the same questions we had to sit with: Where should your team gather during a severe weather warning? Where is your designated meeting spot after an evacuation? Who accounts for employees and visitors? What happens when the person normally in charge is out of the office?
This experience gave us a chance at the Chamber to pull out our plan, review it together, update our steps, and actually practice them. It’s an easy thing to put off until you need it, and by then it’s too late. Consider this your invitation to do the same. Schedule the drill. Walk through your severe weather procedures. Talk through how your team will guide customers, Members, and visitors in your space.
You don’t want to be figuring out the plan in the middle of the emergency. If you cannot say with 100% certainty how each member of your team would react to a siren, alarm, or power outage right now, take the time. Be proactive. Work through a plan, share it with your team, and set your team up to succeed no matter the scenario.