You have heard the expression "bad things happen to good people". Well, bad things can happen to good business as well, and in this day and age it is easier to be prepared than ever before. Nobody ever wants to think about emergencies or disasters, but the reality is they can happen. What might be a disaster for one business could be a simple hiccup for another and vice versa.

The bottom line is: if you and your business are not prepared for emergency situations, your business could crash harder and faster than a car off a cliff. This is not the time to play Boy Scouts. But you can use their motto to ensure that emergencies in your business place have an action plan - Be Prepared.

Mass notification is one of the first steps that you can take towards developing your emergency action plan. You need to have a mass notification system in place to ensure that your workforce, partners, and affiliates, all have access to the same information as and when emergencies arise. It ensures that the information is timely and accurate, so that people can react and respond accordingly.

Email and SMS messaging are great tactics for your emergency backup plan. Ensure that your workforce and affiliates are listed in one group for both your email and SMS service. When an emergency arises, you can send out a group email and a group SMS simultaneously. This will ensure that no matter where your people are located, they will receive your urgent message immediately.

In situations where urgent messages need to be communicated, it is not considered inappropriate to be redundant. You may want to send out one or two messages within a short time frame to ensure that your entire staff and affiliate base has received your message.

You may also want to incorporate a voice broadcasting system into your mass notification plan. Here you will be using the telephone to contact each member of your workforce by the telephone. This is very similar to email and SMS messaging, in that each member you send the message to will receive the message at the same time on his/her phone. This will be a voice message stating your situation and how you expect your recipients to respond. This is a very effective and user-friendly tool that allows you to communicate urgent situations in a very efficient timeframe.

It is never too late to start thinking about your emergency system. Use technology to your advantage to communicate effectively with your workforce.