e-News August 2005
Editors Note: Ironically just as last month's article on dealing with fatalities was written before the London bombings, this month's first article was written last month before the spate of plane disasters.
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Dealing with phone calls in a crisis - the role of the Emergency Call Centre.
In the airline industry there is a well known emergency call centre at Heathrow
Airport called EPIC (Emergency Procedures Information Centre). This was set up
by British Airways but also contracted out to a number of other different
airlines. The role of EPIC is to take the brunt of calls that come in during the
first few days in the aftermath of a major airline incident. It is staffed by
trained volunteers from within the British Airways workforce.
With aircraft carrying several hundred people, there are often thousands of
calls in those first few hours and days following an incident. These can come
from family and friends, through to media, authorities, future travellers and
even busybodies and cranks. Invoking EPIC takes the strain off an organisation
and also allows them to carry on normal business whilst still being able to deal
with the crisis. Reservations lines can continue to take new business in order
to maintain the economic lifeblood of the company.
Rumour has it that British Airways recently took the decision to only allow 'One
World' alliance members to have use of EPIC, so many airlines are now looking
for alternative arrangements. Cruise and ferry companies also do not have the
luxury of an EPIC facility, nor do tour operators.
If a cruise liner or ferry has a major incident several thousand people can
be affected. If a tour operator has a
hotel fire again several hundred people could be affected, so the strain on
any organisation from a call handling perspective would be just as enormous. Each
person involved in your crisis will generate many phone calls, so in turn the
calls received could be multiplied by a factor of at least 10.
We recognised the need at docleaf® a few years ago and developed our own version
of EPIC in order to offer this facility to our retained customers. We have
recently enhanced this service with a new facility based in Cardiff (the
docleaf® Emergency Response Centre). Based very much on the EPIC model, the
docleaf® ERC can be up and running within 60mins of activation with up to 50
call handlers on line capable of handling many thousands of calls.
Trained in dealing with distressed customers, the call handlers can filter the
calls and electronically update clients with a summary on an hourly basis, also
patching any important calls to relevant people in your organisation such as
media or family liaison staff.
Given the recent incidents involving Sharm, Kusadasi and even the London bombs,
now might be the right time to review your own internal procedures and call
handling capability if your organisation were involved in something of this
magnitude.
If you wish to obtain more information on our facility then please click on the
image below. We would also be delighted in showing people around the facility.
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If you are "packaging" holidays then you need to be aware of "closing the
loop" to help keep you out of jail.
One important aspect of Overseas Health & Safety is that of having a due
diligence loop in place within your organisation. By this we mean some form of
internal communication between those responsible for dealing with customer
complaints and the Overseas Health & Safety team. Corporate manslaughter charges
are often based on the premise of:
"prior knowledge" + "subsequent inaction" = "gross negligence".
Many times fatalities have occurred overseas involving a Travel Arranger's third
party supplier where a company has made all the right moves in handling the
incident and the media. Then subsequent to this previous customers start coming
forward stating they wrote in several weeks/months before the fatal incident,
advising the Travel Arranger of the accident waiting to happen!
This can be particularly damning when you have expended time, energy and
resources into doing the best for helping the parties involved in the incident.
The way to prevent this happening is by having a due diligence system in place
whereby any Health & Safety issues raised by customers, staff or suppliers are
subsequently investigated and resolved, thus preventing any re-occurrence.
The Lyme Bay Corporate Manslaughter case in Dorset (see below) came about as a
direct result of this, previous groups had complained about the safety equipment
at the centre, the centre staff had sent memo's to the owner requesting the
budget to purchase new equipment, all of these were ignored and unfortunately a
tragic accident occurred in which four children lost their lives whilst out
canoeing. The centre owner was imprisoned for 3 years.
"Death of Simon Dean and three others in March 1993
Lyme Bay In November 1994, Oll Ltd and its managing director Peter Kite was
convicted of the manslaughter of four students of Southway Comprehensive School
in Plymouth Simon Deane (16), Clair Langley (16), Rachel Walker (16) and Dean
Sawyer (17) - who died during a canoeing trip in Lyme Regis, Dorset in March
1993. Winchester Crown court held that the group was accompanied by a school
teacher and two unqualified instructors who only had basic proficiency skills in
canoeing. The group was swept out to sea, and capsized frequently. The Centre
had not provided any distress flares and had not informed the coastguard of the
expedition. The prosecution highlighted the resignation of two instructors from
the Centre a year earlier in protest at poor safety conditions. Mr Kite was
sentenced to three years imprisonment (reduced to two on appeal) and the company
was fined £60,000. The Centres manager Joseph Stoddart was acquitted of
manslaughter."
Update on Corporate Manslaughter Convictions in England and Wales:
Number of Incidents: 14
Total number of deaths involved in these incidents: 21
Number of Companies convicted: 7
Number of Company Directors Convicted: 7
Number of Business Owners (sole traders or partners) convicted: 11
If you would like more information on how docleaf® can help you get your due
diligence loop in place, then contact us at info@docleaf.com
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docleaf® CEO to become a TV star!
Watch this space for further details of an exciting new fly on the wall
documentary featuring the docleaf® CEO, David Perl. In a few weeks time Sky One
/ Zig Zag productions will begin filming at our Watford head office for the
programme entitled 'The day you die' (very apt given the business we work in),
which will be screened on Sky television.
What they will do is put our CEO through a battery of tests which allow them to
predict fairly accurately his life span based on work, home-life, stress, diet,
exercise etc. Then they put him through an intensive five week programme with
various coaches, and try to extend his lifespan!!
Lets hope they are successful, perhaps they'll advise him not be in the Crisis
Management and Health & Safety business as these are potentially both bad for
your health!
Watch this space for when the show is going to be aired.
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ICE your mobile: (In Case of Emergency)
A very sensible idea in helping the emergency services
contact your Next of Kin.
The campaign encourages people to store the word ICE in their mobile phone
address books, next to their next of kin's number.
From the experience of our CEO who was a formerly a doctor and with the
company's experience as front-line crisis management advisors, it is all too
apparent of the great challenges created when urgently trying to contact the
next of kin. this is even more so when faced with the critically injured or
worse, fatalities. Time is of the real essence, especially in the age of a
global and instantaneous media who are able to transmit live pictures within
moments of an event occurring.
The ICE campaign, which stands for "in case of emergency", was the idea of
paramedic Bob Brotchie from Suffolk. The idea has since been backed by East
Anglian Ambulance Service and later by Welsh ambulance officials. New York
police have now invited Mr Brotchie to explain to officers in the United States
how the idea works.
Given I have heard this from at least 4 separate sources, it may well be you
have already come across this. If not, now is the time to ICE your phones!
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Security in the Meeting Industry, November 17 & 18th of 2005
Hans Kanold, a respected colleague docleaf® has been working hard to develop the
first global security conference aimed at the hotel, meetings, travel & security
industries.
This excellent 2 day event is taking place in Copenhagen on November 17th &
18th. An additional bonus is you can hear me speak on the subject of "How to
effectively manage a crisis to minimise the damage to your reputation". This in
itself has to be worth making the trip over to Sweden and do some Christmas
shopping at the same time!
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docleaf® helps you prevent crises and cope with their after-effects. We provide comprehensive and extensive services in Crisis Management, Trauma Counselling and Overseas Health & Safety.
Click here for the docleaf® web site.
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