Hazard identification, risk assessment and hazard control (Chapters 9–11) all focus on strengthening an organisation’s safety defence layers in response to latent conditions contributing to WHS incidents, as outlined in Chapter 5’s discussions of the Swiss Cheese Model.  Importantly, James Reason emphasises that it is not possible to control all possible hazards all of the time, so it is vital to “to provide the means of escape and rescue should hazard containment fail” (Reason, 1997, p.7).  This is known as an emergence response and is the focus of this chapter.

An emergency response may be defined as:

An immediate, systematic response to an unexpected or dangerous occurrence. The goal of an emergency response procedure is to mitigate the impact of the event on people, property, and the environment.  Emergencies warranting a response range from hazardous material spills resulting from a transportation accident to a natural disaster. (Mishra, 2018, para. 1)

Figure 12.1: Signage indicates the direction of the closest emergency exit

Source: pxhere.com, CC0

A fully functioning WHS management system is constantly striving to ‘block the holes’ in James Reason’s Swiss Cheese Model and reduce the risk of a serious incident occurring.  When all else fails, however, an emergency response is our last layer of protection.  Importantly, emergency response protocols extend beyond WHS boundaries to include first responses to natural disaster or public disaster situations.  The goal of any emergency response is to reduce injury and loss of life as the immediate situation unfolds.

The challenge of natural disasters, public disasters or even a critical WHS incident is that they are low probability-high consequence, events (Pearson & Clair, 1998).  The following video explains why being prepared is important but also why it is a challenge to keep our focus on these unlikely, but potentially catastrophic, events.

Emergency response plans

So where should we begin?  The role of an emergency response plan is to identify the best response when a particular situation eventuates.  For example, an emergency response for a fire requires a building evacuation.  This is quite different a lockdown designed to protect staff from a potentially violent workplace trespasser.  The goal of the emergency response is to reduce the risk of harm to those immediately threatened by the hazard.

Developing an emergency response plan is challenging because it depends on the number of known potential hazards and the number of people and/or first responders who need to be coordinated.  However, the alternative is having no planned response for known potential hazards which clearly increases the risk of harm to workers and site visitors (sub-contractors, customers etc.) as well as increasing a business’ legal liability.

In the following Contemporary WHS Challenge, Steve Anderson, former Chief Executive Officer of Foodstuffs (South Island), discusses the critical role that their emergency response plan played in responding to the Christchurch 2011 earthquakes.

Steps to actually create your plan will not be covered here as it is appropriate to examine your legislative requirements, refer to industry standards and involve your staff in creating the plan, however, there are many resources available for businesses starting, or continually improving on, their emergency response plans (see Box 12.6).

Ideally organisations would have designed and well-practised emergency responses that will reduce any further potential harm during critical incidents.  It is useful, however, to gain insights from the broader field of crisis management to inform our understanding of the specific role of leadership during, and in the aftermath, of a larger scale critical incident.

Leadership during emergency responses (Crisis Management)

A crisis maybe defined as “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending…especially one with possibility of a highly undesirable outcome” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.b, para. 3). Ideally, an emergency response would reduce confusion and focus staff on action during an incident, but even then the immediate consequences and recovery phase may prove complex for leaders.  Crises are important because they are low–probability but high–consequence situations that are time sensitive, and implicitly are high uncertainty (Pearson & Clair, 1998).  These are precisely the scenarios that are challenging for decision-making, as they invoke leaders to adopt their heuristics—mental shortcuts to decision-making that can be implicitly biased (Paulus et al,. 2022)—which may not lead to the best outcomes.

Eric McNulty is an expert on crisis management who suggests successful crisis leadership comprises:

1. A capable team

The leader will surround themselves with a capable team who are empowered to make valuable contributions through decentralised decision-making.

This is important because, under the high task load conditions established by crises, leaders are vulnerable to heuristics (Paulus et al,. 2022) and shared decision-making has been determined to be most effective approach (Kunzle et al., 2010).

2. Asking questions

The leader will ask questions to get other people’s perspectives and engage them in collaborative problem solving.

This keeps the leader informed while, again, ensuring that they are not impacted by heuristics and other potential decision-making biases (Thompson et al., 1998).

Simulated emergency responses

Almost of equal harm to not having an emergency response plan, is having a plan without training workers on the actual emergency procedures and rehearsing these emergency responses under safe, practice, conditions.  Even when we offer drills, some staff will not take this simulation training seriously, so this type of training works best when it is embedded in a functional safety culture.  Some staff might be blasé about emergency responses because they believe their instincts will kick-in and protect them when faced with a critical situation, but this is simply not the case.  The following video demonstrates that without practice, people can be slow to react during an emergency response and this increases their risk of harm.

The following workplace recognises that they might have some staff with poor attitudes towards emergency response drills.  In their emergency response training video they use humour to highlight poor worker attitudes and behaviours towards safety emergency response protocols, while reinforcing the desired emergency response procedures.

In conclusion, the process you might undertake in your business to create an emergency response plan will vary, however, collaboration with staff to identify the hazards and create workable emergency responses is crucial.  Rolling out initial awareness training and following it up with simulated emergency response events will enable your business to, firstly, ensure the emergency response procedures documented on paper are actionable in practice and, secondly, make these response procedures memorable for staff should they ever be required in an actual emergency.  Finally, the leadership you demonstrate during any emergency event will fundamentally shape its outcome.