What Should Go in an Office Emergency Kit | SERVPRO® of Downtown Charleston

5/16/2022 (Permalink)

Contact SERVPRO® of Downtown Charleston to create an Emergency Ready Plan or to learn more about our scope of commercial services.

When you’re running a business, you have tons on your to-do list at any given time. You’re making big plans, restocking inventory, keeping your facilities clean and safe, managing a team of employees and navigating the changing times.

While all of these things are important, there may be one item you’re leaving out—emergency planning.

As much as you might not like to think about it, emergencies happen. To keep your business up and running after an emergency, you need a plan, which we can help you with. And to keep the heart of your business—your employees—safe during an emergency, you need an emergency kit.

Why Businesses Need an Emergency Kit
Since we live in a coastal area that’s no stranger to hurricanes, you probably understand the importance of maintaining a well-stocked emergency kit.

You might have an emergency kit in your home. To protect yourself and your family, you ideally need a kit in your house and in your car, stocked with items to keep you safe and healthy in the case of a storm or other emergency.

But most of us spend hours each day at work. When you’re operating the business, you may even spend more time at work than you do at home sometimes.

So you need to take the same preventive measures in the workplace that you do at home. You need to maintain a stock of items that will help nourish your team and keep you safe and protected during a storm and the immediate aftermath.

What to Put in an Office Emergency Kit
So, what should go in an emergency kit for the workplace? Well, first things first—you may actually need multiple kits (or at least one very large supply) depending on the size of your facility and the number of employees on your team.

Determining what goes inside is fairly simple, if you already have a good understanding of what goes in a personal or family emergency kit. It’s basically the same thing, on a larger scale.

When planning out your emergency supplies, you’ll need to base the amount of supplies on how many employees you have. (You should update the kit with extra supplies when employees are added to the team.)

An office emergency kit should contain:

• Flashlights, with extra batteries
• First-aid kits
• Canned goods and prepackaged foods to supply the entire team
• Emergency blankets
• Enough bottled water to provide one gallon per person for at least three days
• A weather radio that’s battery-powered or operated by hand crank
• Extra cell phone batteries and/or portable chargers
• Physical maps of the area surrounding your facility
• Work gloves
• Multi-purpose tools, like a Swiss Army knife
• Alcohol-based hand sanitizer
• Matches

Because every individual has personalized needs, you may want to suggest that employees also keep a small kit of supplies on-site. This kit could include basics such as prescription medications, contact lens solution and personal hygiene products.

Planning ahead for an emergency is the best possible step businesses can take. Get in touch today to create an Emergency Ready Plan or to learn more about our scope of commercial services.