Today, the ways to notify your people are practically endless. They are registered to receive text messages and/or emails. And, whether implemented or not, they have the capability of receiving those same notifications as they are sitting in front of a computer that displays an emergency message, while walking down a hall hearing it via a PA system, or by seeing a digital sign broadcasting information. As a result, your people have multiple ways of staying informed about what is going on and can remain off property if directed.
But what about your visitors and/or those not registered to receive alerts?
Your visitors aren’t typically enrolled to receive text or email messages, and what if they aren’t in the building to see scrolling or flashing messages or hear announcements over a PA system?
We all worry for those who could potentially be traveling to an educational or corporate campus on any given day with the possibility of walking into a nightmare. We all lose sleep imagining the scenarios that could happen; realizing that the text/email alerting system we have in place does not reach everyone.
It’s time to get creative. It’s time to explore as many communication channels as possible. It’s time to become truly Omnimodal.
Corporate and educational campuses across the country are embracing the concept of Omnimodality by extending their emergency notification system, once used to only send text and emails, to other connected technologies, in an effort to reach as many people as possible - no matter where they are and what they are doing.
For instance, the University of Nevada Reno has connected their emergency notification system to their campus radio station. Ed Atwell, Emergency Manager, explains “An emergency message goes out as a text/email message to all faculty, staff and students, as well as anyone who has registered contact information via personal cell phones, and also scrolls on all university PC’s and monitors. At the same time, the message is automatically enunciated and broadcast, interrupting the normal radio programming on our campus.”
The method of tying their emergency notification system to radio broadcasts, via Information Station Specialists, can be instituted via the Common Alerting Protocol features that the two solutions share. Atwell can now initiate these notifications automatically, simultaneously, and immediately using Omnilert’s e2Campus Program.
By broadcasting information on the radio, people don’t have to go digging for their mobile phones while driving, and those visitors not enrolled are told to stay away or instructed to take a specific action for their safety. Atwell’s vision for the Omnimodal transmission of notifications now extends to automobile radios near his campus.
How many ways can you notify your people regardless of location and how they are involved with your organization?
