37% of employees don’t know their office emergency plan

When disaster strikes in the workplace – do your employees know what to do? A recent survey has revealed that 37% of workers have no idea what the procedure is in their workplace.

When looking for a new job, it’s not unusual to take job security into consideration. A new survey from CareerBuilder looks at how safe workers feel in their workplace, and the results are quite worrying. 93% of workers feel their office is a safe place to work, yet only half of workers say they would know what to do to protect themselves if there was an emergency in their office that posed a physical threat.

Protected for disaster?

When asked if they considered their workplace to be well-protected, the majority of employees considered their place of work to be best protected for flood, fire or other disaster (66%), closely followed by:

• Weather-related threat – 65%
• Physical threat from another person – 53%
• Digital hacking threat – 41%

RELATED: Five safety precautions your business should be taking

A large proportion of workers (63%) say their company has an emergency plan in place in case of fire, flood or other disaster; yet less than half (47%) say the same of extremely severe weather. When it comes to a technology security breach, 44% of workers believe their company has an emergency plan in place, but fewer (42%) say their company has an emergency plan in place in case of a physical attack from another person.

“Workplace emergency plans should be treated with just as much importance as any other workplace policy and procedure,” says Scott Helmes, managing director of CareerBuilder UK.

Helmes continued, “It is of the utmost importance that all employees are not only aware of office emergency procedures, but are well-practiced in them so they know what to do to protect themselves and others.”

CareerBuilder UK provides three tips to help increase worker’s safety in the workplace:

• Be prepared – take time to read up on the emergency safety procedures so you know what to do if disaster strikes.
• Be calm – should the worst happen, take a second to gather your thoughts and think your plan of action through as you could put yourself in more danger by panicking.
• Be vigilant – take a positive step and be aware of your surroundings, tell a line manager or superior if you suspect suspicious behaviour.

The national survey was conducted online on behalf of CareerBuilder.co.uk of more than 1000 employees across the UK.