Crisis Management Manual - Emergency Contacts

We are thinking of creating a manual for crisis management - with all emergency contacts, forms, documents etc that are needed in case of a crisis.
We also would like to give a copy to each member on the crisis management team.

And in case of a crisis (fire, flood etc), this manual should not be stored on site or we won't be able to access it.

However, we do not want employees to keep these "controlled documents" even after they leave the company one day, and we won't be able to get them back.

Also if we were to update any documents, the document control will be very difficult.



Any suggestions?

We are thinking of creating a manual for crisis management - with all emergency contacts, forms, documents etc that are needed in case of a crisis.
We also would like to give a copy to each member on the crisis management team.

And in case of a crisis (fire, flood etc), this manual should not be stored on site or we won't be able to access it.

However, we do not want employees to keep these "controlled documents" even after they leave the company one day, and we won't be able to get them back.

Also if we were to update any documents, the document control will be very difficult.



Any suggestions?

Dear jtang,

Typical standard procedures should accommodate all yr mentioned requirements. Mainly a question of documentation control / automatic backing-up.

(I assume “copy” = “uncontrolled” document, if otherwise [unless you accept uncontrolled copying] you seem to have a job for Sherlock Holmes ).

Rgds / Charles.C

Any hard or electronic copy is difficult to control. It's not an easy answer. I would suggest you get over the fact that people could take a copy (after all if you gave them a hard copy they could photocopy or scan it) so I would suggest you send an electronic copy to people's email addresses, home email if they can't access work emails from home. Then at least when you update it, you can send an updated copy and you know they have it.

I'd then audit this by asking a random member of the team to send back to you what their most up to date copy is.

I also recommend that you keep a hard copy on site that you then control. I've had electricity fail at my site before so it was useful to have numbers then (as the wifi went down too so we couldn't even access email.)

Maybe your electronic copies can be stored on an external server or document system outside of your organisation - cloud based document control. It can then allow relevant people to have access when required. I think that in this day (for countries that have internet access) there are many solutions to have documents stored else where and you can have from a number of different devices ie mobile phones, tablets, laptops.


On the other matter of staff copying procedures, people will copy if they really want to. Having your electronic copy as "controlled" and anything that gets printed is "uncontrolled" is a good start for food businesses that operate documents electronically.