Whether employees work from one location or are
"If you have a global workforce in Eastern Europe right now, you need to be thinking about evacuation," he says. "If you have employees that live in California or the West or Arizona, where wildfires are getting bigger and bigger, you better have an answer for how you're going to evacuate your employees if those fires get out of control. If you live in Florida, Taiwan or Japan, or you have employees there, you better have a tsunami and or hurricane plan to get your people out of that if they get stuck."
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As emergency incidents increase — for example, the number of natural disasters has increased five times in the last 50 years, according to insurance comparison platform The Zebra — Buckner emphasizes that not all disasters come with a warning, so it's important for employers to keep an updated disaster plan in place. Considerations like emergency rescue and transport, paid time off and financial assistance are just some details that cover a broad range of potential issues, and should be included in any disaster plan.
Global Guardian helps employers keep their workers safe by providing international medical, security and emergency response services to their employees. The company's trained professionals and fleet of emergency air and ground vehicles are equipped for an immediate response to everything from recovering workers from a domestic hurricane or an individual health crisis abroad, to evacuating them and their families from a war zone.
"We are guaranteed to see three to seven of those events in the next 18 months," he says. "With 100% certainty, there will be more natural disasters. And there will absolutely be more terrorist attacks in the next 18 months. If you're not thinking like that, you're not posturing like that, then you're already behind and you're failing in your legal obligation to your employees."
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And while employers have a key role to play when things go wrong, the chances of a positive outcome in the wake of disaster improve dramatically if employees also take an active role to prepare as well. In a Zebra survey of 1,100 Americans, only 18.3% of respondents had set aside funds to cover damages from natural disasters and 43.9% had not made any preparations, such as reviewing home and auto insurance to see what would be covered or putting together a kit of emergency supplies.
Buckner advises individuals to set aside what they would need to communicate and live off of for four to five days without power or access to food. He cited recent severe storms in the U.S. that caught communities and officials unaware, such as the Texas freeze in 2021 and Hurricane Helene's damage to western parts of North Carolina this past September. Free checklists of emergency supplies are available online, and these are a good idea to keep in mind even for less severe situations, such as an extended power outage.
"[First], you're going to need dry food, batteries, flashlights, candles, medical supplies — if you have children, baby formula, medication for the elderly, diapers for infants—all those things," he says. "Second, you really want backup for communication to tell people where you are and what your conditions are. If you can communicate, I can almost guarantee I can get to you by helicopter, by boat, by people on foot, and so forth. All the rest is academic. Should you have flood insurance for your home? That should be automatic, especially if you live in [a flood] zone. Should you have a plan for your family? If the kids are at school, your spouse is at work and you're at home, what is the link up plan?"
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Going beyond their duty of care requirements, employers can also help their workforce prepare by offering educational resources to employees about any threats that may exist where they may be living and working. The combined effort of organizations and individuals to make employees resilient in the face of danger is good for them and the business, Buckner says.
"Anything can happen anywhere," he says. "There's an individual responsibility here, [but] there's nothing wrong with preparing your workforce to prepare to help themselves. If a company is willing to [put in] the time, effort and expense to educate their employee base, it's all upside for everyone."
