Corporations in all industries need a reliable way to communicate with their employees and stakeholders in all situations, from daily operations to crises. To develop an effective enterprise alert system, businesses must choose tools and features that meet the needs of their managers, employees and stakeholders.
Building an enterprise alert system requires analyzing communication requirements, during standard operations and emergency situations of all kinds. Employers must ensure that they can contact employees who are on- and off-site, as well as those who are off-duty or on-call. And communication must go both ways so that employers can verify each worker’s status, safety and availability as quickly as possible.
Top uses for an enterprise alert system
Employers may immediately think about emergency situations when developing an enterprise alert system. But critical communication systems have countless applications in crises and non-emergency situations:
- Notifying employees of leadership changes and press release information
- Calling in additional employees to address staffing shortages
- Sending HR resources
- Informing employees of an active assailant
- Providing closure or delayed start instructions during severe weather
- Notifying workers of shelter-in-place or evacuation orders
- Requesting location or status updates during an evacuation
- Notifying remote employees of network issues or potential cyber breaches
By analyzing all the potential applications of critical communications systems, corporations can ensure they choose the right features and use them to their fullest potential.
Key alert system features to look for
When you’re building an enterprise alert system, there are many available tools and solutions to look for. To choose the right options, consider the necessary and optional features that your organization needs.
Tracking and reporting
In a crisis, sending out an emergency notification isn’t enough; it’s critical to verify whether the recipients received that critical alert. In some industries, not having the capability to verify message receipt may be a compliance issue.
As such, analytics and reporting features are crucial. Managers must be able to see which of their team members received a time-sensitive message. And a message receipt isn’t the only important metric; it’s just as essential for the sender to see who opened the message. In a crisis that requires immediate evacuation or another response procedure, it’s imperative to be able to see whether all employees received and opened the alert. Reporting is a vital part of emergency preparedness as well. Incident managers can access key data following a drill to identify weak points in the response procedures. They can use this information to adapt communication protocols to ensure that everyone would be effectively alerted in a real emergency.
Customized notifications
For many situations, it’s best to use premade messaging templates. Alerts for severe weather, emergency closures, holiday reminders and network outages can follow prebuilt templates. But it’s equally important to have the option to customize messages quickly so that recipients get the complete and accurate information they need to respond.
Language is another feature to consider. In a stressful situation where every second counts, most people tend to understand best when reading their native language. A modern mass notification system should include multilingual capabilities and automatic translation so that every user can specify their preferred language.
Reliability
An enterprise alert system must be reliable. An unreliable system can cause additional problems on top of the issues created by inadequate communication. Managers and administrators should have no doubt that the messages they send will reach the intended recipients quickly, no matter where those individuals are located.
Targeted messaging
Not every incident affects all employees. Some are localized and others only impact certain teams. However, if every employee receives all alerts, it can severely impact productivity and contribute to stress and morale concerns.
Look for a communication platform that allows targeted messaging. Users should be able to quickly identify the intended recipient groups by team name, role, geographic location or any other predefined designator. Targeted messaging reduces alert fatigue and helps ensure that recipients will pay attention to the notifications they receive.
Two-way communication
Sending emergency alerts is important, but it’s just as critical to ensure that employees can respond to those messages. With two-way messaging, managers can request status updates or ask on-call personnel how long it will take to report to work. Polls are another way to request feedback and allow employees to respond quickly even when they are off-site.
Another potential feature to consider is anonymous text-based tipping. In many cases, an early warning can be the difference between a minor incident and a catastrophic emergency. An anonymous tip solution encourages employees to maintain situational awareness and report any potential risks. They can bring awareness to potential compliance issues without fearing reprisal.
Seamless integration
Finally, new communication solutions must seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure, such as contact databases and alarm systems. By choosing tools that integrate well, emergency managers can ensure that there are no unintended consequences of the upgrade.
Create your enterprise alert system
No matter how big your business is or what industry it’s a part of, it needs an enterprise alert system. It’s imperative to ensure that you can quickly and reliably contact your people in any situation, including an emergency. Outdated phone trees and automated emails aren’t enough; they may not reach employees who are out of the office or away from their desks. It’s crucial to incorporate modern features: multichannel messaging, targeted notifications, multilingual alerts and easy-to-use response features.
Corporations of all sizes can turn to Motorola Solutions for cutting-edge communication solutions. Our mass notification platform and personal safety apps provide critical capabilities in any enterprise alert system, and they’re designed to integrate with existing infrastructures. Additionally, our platforms are easy to use and extremely reliable; users can be trained in under two hours, and our system has an uptime rate of over 99.99%. To find out which products are right for your organization, contact our team.
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