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My Job is to Hit the Panic Button
I work in crisis communication at an educational institution.
My job: to send out emergency notification to the masses.
My fear: royally screwing up, and possibly causing more harm in a crisis.
The Job of Emergency Notification
I stumbled into this job after a few years of writing press releases and handling media relations. I was asked to take it on when a number of other people passed on the opportunity. Being eager to please and open to new experiences, I agreed to go through the training to learn how to do it.
The training was in two intense phases: one was learning to write clear notifications for a variety of situations including weather warnings, fire, power outages, evacuations, epidemics, riots, and active shooters. I was taught to be clear and concise, and to send updates as soon as possible.
The second part was all about scaring the crap out of me if I was slow or incompetent. I was put through a rigorous training process to fully learn the software system. The system notifies users via a variety of methods: phone calls, texts, emails, public address system, the media, and website. I couldn’t fake me way through the software, I had to know the system inside and out to the point where it was second nature so I wouldn’t freeze…