National Preparedness Goal – What Corporate Citizens Need to Know

The Federal Government just released the first edition of theNational Preparedness Goal.  The Goal is intended to help create “a secure and resilient Nation with the capabilities required across the whole community to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.”  The Goal establishes core capabilities for the execution of five mission areas: prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery.  A major theme throughout the document is that preparedness is the shared responsibility of the whole community.

So what does that mean for corporate citizens?

The following is a list of recommendations that come from the National Preparedness Goal that I believe has direct implications for corporate citizens.

• The Goal encourages local governments to assess their risks.  Many local emergency managers are proactive and have been assessing community risks for years.  Unfortunately, this is not always this case.  Whenever possible, corporate citizens should have relationships with their local emergency managers and encourage them to assess the broad community risks.  This is currently going on in Palm Beach County, where they recently had a Business Disaster Preparedness Symposium to talk about issues throughout the county.  Where this doesn’t exist, corporate citizens can take a leadership role in creating it.

• A third suggestion is that members of the community “train, exercise, and partner with emergency management officials.”  Employees often want to be a part of helping a community respond to a disaster, but haven’t had formal training that would make them effective volunteers.  Some companies have a taken a leadership role in training their employees to volunteer after disasters.  Grainger built a partnership with the Red Cross called “Ready When the Time Comes” to train volunteers.  The partnership is a finalist for BCLC’s Partnership Award this year, and you can read more about it (and vote) here.
• The Goal suggests that “strengthening the health and social services, social fabric, historic and cultural resources…enhance[s] the resiliency of the entire community.”  Corporate citizens can play a major role in this.  For example, the Office Depot Foundation only gives grants to nonprofits if the nonprofit has at least a simple business continuity plan.  By ensuring that the nonprofits are prepared for a disaster, the Office Depot Foundation is helping protect the social services of the community.

The National Preparedness Goal establishes some important concepts for preparing for disasters.  As leaders in their communities, corporate citizens can play a major role in ensuring the whole community is prepared and ready for whatever strikes.  For more ideas on how businesses can play a bigger role in their communities, our disaster reports throughout the years have many great examples and ideas.