Must haves for your risk management app

Is your business continuity or crisis management plan in a binder somewhere in your office? While we applaud you if you have a plan and know where it is, what happens if a crisis hits and no one is at the office? Or the office is destroyed? What do you do?

Well, many businesses have an app for that. Businesses are creating crisis management apps that any employee can have access to on their mobile device.

Want one?

3 features your crisis management app needs

 Your app has the ability to be so much more than your binder. Here are three features you can’t skimp on:

1. Notification

Your team needs to know something is wrong, and your team leaders should not have to (and don’t have the time to) make calls to everyone. Your app should allow management to send a mass notification via text, email and/or voice.

To make things easier, you should also add groups. In a crisis, different teams have different roles. Your app should allow management to create groups so the right people get the right notifications.

2. Access to documents

Your app needs some sort of cloud feature that can store critical documents. You should be able to access these documents easily because, well, you are in an emergency situation.

That being said, don’t make it too easy to access these documents if they are confidential. The app should have different access levels so employees only have access to what they need or have the clearance to see.

3. Task management

Your app should have a feature that allows everyone to log work done or make status updates. Some teams may only be able to do their jobs once another team has does theirs; everyone needs to be aware of everyone else’s activity to prevent inefficiency.

Ideally your task management feature should include a messaging tool. It will be easier for team members to do all things crisis management inside the app versus jumping from your app to email to text messaging. If everything is done in the app, you can also have a complete view of how well the crisis was managed when measuring response success.

You and your company have put a lot of time and thought into your business continuity and crisis management plans – don’t let them get lost in the disaster you need to manage; invest in an app.