Location-based Intelligence and Mass Notification Ensure Duty of Care during Critical Event

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic more employees are working from remote locations than ever before. As a result, organizations are seeking new ways to fulfill their duty of care responsibilities to a distributed workforce.

Ensuring Employee Safety Throughout Civil Unrest

For Crisis24, a global integrated risk management company with operations in Annapolis, Maryland, this challenge  arose on January 6, 2021, when pro-Trump supporters gathered at the U.S. Capitol to protest the 2020 Presidential election certification process. The situation quickly escalated as protests turned into riots, members of Congress and staff sheltered in place, and five people were killed, including rioters and a Capitol police officer. 

The leadership of Crisis24 had three primary concerns: 

• Locating employees working and possibly traveling in the Capitol area
• Notifying them of the escalating violence
• Confirming their safety

Crisis24’s Integrated Solution: Intelligence, Global Operations, and Mass Communication

Crisis24 uses a combined approach to ensuring the safety and well-being of its employees that leverages intelligence, global response operations, and a proprietary technology platform to notify and communicate with employees any time of day, anywhere in the world. Originally developed with travelers in mind, the technology has proven increasingly relevant as employees work from remote locations, and duty of care is extended beyond the traditional workplace. Crisis24 uses this same global intelligence and technology platform as part of its own duty of care program, known internally  as “Beacon.” Beacon incorporates Crisis24’s intelligence analysis and reporting, creates advisories, and provides instant check-in and a round-the-clock hotline support and mass notification capabilities which immediately connects to Crisis24’s Global Operations Center.

On January 4, Crisis24’s Intelligence Team began alerting the Global Operations Center (GOC) of potential unrest in the Capitol region. Leveraging dynamic intelligence reports generated by intel analysts, Crisis24’s GOC team issued a series of alerts to its employees advising them of heightened security in the metro DC area. Additional alerts were again issued on January 5 and 6 as it became clear that the demonstrations escalated and continued throughout the evening as D.C.'s mayor imposed curfews in an effort to restore order. Due to the significance of the event, all Crisis24 employees, regardless of location, were notified of the event for awareness.  Employees were encouraged to check in using their Beacon mobile app to affirm their safety and well being and were determined to be safe from harm.

Summary

Utilizing the same intelligence, mobile application, and technologies available to our clients, Crisis24 confirmed that all employees, including those working in the DC metro region, were safe from harm throughout the violence at the Capitol.

As workplaces gradually reopen, organizations are likely to support a hybrid remote/on-site workforce as the Covid pandemic upends the traditional concept of workplace. Accordingly, duty of care will continue to be central to organizational resilience. Business travel is likely to resume with the distribution of a Covid vaccine, but organizations will have to rethink how they care for their employees in the new workplace model. Crisis24’s unique integrated approach—notification technology, underpinned by a world-class intelligence platform and Global Operations Center--will continue to help organizations meet their duty of care responsibilities in increasingly complex environments while ultimately supporting a resilient workforce.

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