Think about your last event.
Were there a few unexpected incidents your team could have been better prepared at handling?
When was the last time you went over exactly what to do during a severe weather situation?
Hire any new part-time staff since then?
Do they have an understanding of your different touchpoints for superior customer service?
Is your team executing consistently?
Whatever your concerns, your team probably could’ve been more prepared for your last event.
What do you think?
What do you do?
Can you recall the last time you had similar thoughts running through your mind after an event?
It has to be a troubling experience, especially if you’re asking these questions regularly.
How do you train your employees to be better at incident management?
How do you help them respond faster to the incidents you’re aware are occurring?
These are essential questions to ask yourself, and the good news is we have a solution we think you’ll find quite compelling.
Most importantly, your staff will enjoy it too.
What’s the solution?
Tabletop Exercises.
Tabletop exercises are a great way to practice your incident management plans without requiring the interruption of a full-blown drill.
It’s an intelligent way to practice emergencies as a team constantly.
Are you ready to learn more?
Let’s get started.
Tabletop Exercises Help You Strengthen Your Incident Management Weaknesses
Emergency management teams all overuse role-playing exercises to improve their processes for handling incidents.
It’s certainly not a new trend.
This form of practice has been benefiting businesses for decades.
Think about it.
What’s one of the biggest challenges you regularly face as a leader?
Training staff.
Not to mention, part-time staff that comes and go.
Integrate tabletop techniques into your training process and watch your team understand their duties a lot faster.
Creating a training program for current, new, and temporary staff allows you to combine essential policies and processes.
You can develop scenarios where staff learns what you need them to do and how you need them to do it.
Trust us, it works.
We know it works because this is how we develop our software.
We listen to industry professionals like you, and then we walk through the many scenarios to better understand how the software will be best used.
This is how 24/7 Software gets it.
And gets it right.
Empower your team by helping them to develop their professional intuition.
- Rather than reacting, they become proactive.
- Developing their instincts through role-playing exercises helps them be well prepared for events so they can perform better.
It’s apparent, improved incident response management and the effects of laser-focused preparation.
9 Benefits That Result in Effective & Efficient Incident Management
Now, it’s essential to understand the nine ways constant and consistent practice will empower your staff and improve your operation.
Consider how implementing this technique will change the way your boss sees you as a leader.
How you and your staff perform at every event can change for the better, starting now.
1. Helps Your Property Achieve Proactive Operations
Proactive Operations is a methodology by which property operations utilize strategy, infrastructure, and technology to achieve maximum performance.
With Proactive Operations, your organization can manage everything that occurs to ensure your customers' safe and memorable experience.
2. Creates Accountability Among Staff
Running through scenarios with your team focuses them.
Everyone learns the fundamentals for ensuring effective and efficient incident handling.
During this time, assess their abilities effectively, coach them, and hold them accountable for future events.
Give them the tools and then hold them accountable.
That’s easy enough.
3. Your Team Feels Valued
Taking time to train your staff shows them you care about everyone’s success.
All that effort you’re putting into your legendary events, share it with your employees.
Role-playing exercises allow you to find the root of the problem.
Whether it’s a problem in your process or personnel, you can take a closer look at the details.
Recognizing your team and their roles validate their importance to the greater good.
4. It Challenges Employees to Improve
Rather than dictating processes to your staff, let them iron out ideas for improving your operation.
While walking through various scenarios, they might find specific details in the process to improve – ones you never thought.
Remember, they’re at the forefront of your efforts.
They see everything first.
Tabletop exercises give you and your team the freedom to practice without consequence and test theories that could work.
It’s essential to make your mistakes now, not when your center stage.
5. Builds Your Team’s Confidence to Perform
Successful people are confident.
So are successful teams.
Develop your employees into experts.
Role-playing exercises increase self-awareness.
Training allows them to enhance their know-how, with all the scenarios' advantages not being real life.
Trying it out during an exercise builds the muscle memory for when it will count.
Then, when you give them feedback, they know they’re performing to your standards.
Foster an environment of confidence to reap the benefits.
6. Produces More Solutions to Complex Scenarios
So much can go wrong or right when staff document incidents, analyze them and communicate them.
Agree?
There might be several steps in the process that you can improve or change completely.
You can improve your process to help your team become better aware of all incidents occurring throughout your property.
Acting out common incidents and how to respond can surface a collection of solutions for your arsenal.
This will strengthen your team’s effectiveness.
7. Enhances Awareness of What’s Occurring at Your Property
More solutions lead to enhanced awareness of all incidents occurring at your venue or facility. Train your employees to understand the impact of their role.
Role-playing exercises that lead to a more aware workforce results in faster response times and happier, safer guests. It’s a ripple effect that leads to a memorable experience for your guests.
8. Drastically Increases Productivity
Your training efforts will produce a high-performing team.
What does a high-performing team do? They produce.
Now you’ll have…
- Accurate documentation.
- Useful analytics.
- Increased communication.
- Enhanced awareness.
Role-playing exercises give you and your team the ability to be highly effective and efficient so you can experience peace of mind.
9. Builds Your Authority as a Professional Leader
Proving yourself as an effective leader includes constantly preparing, learning, and achieving, alongside your team.
Over to You
As a professional leader, tabletop exercises give you the ability to improve your staff's effectiveness and efficiency, which leads to first-rate incident management.
Empower your staff and take your operation to the next level with role-playing exercises. The result will be the peace of mind, a safer environment for all, and employing Proactive Operations.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.
