It is highly recommended that your organization assign specific individuals as Preparedness Champions. These individuals are responsible for ensuring that the organization is adequately prepared to deal with emergencies and for supporting emergency response actions. By appointing Preparedness Champions, your organization can ensure that it is always ready to respond to any crisis with a well-coordinated and effective plan.

Who are Preparedness Champions?

Preparedness Champions are designated personnel assigned the responsibility of enhancing awareness of emergency preparedness across all departments within the organization. Additionally, they lead the response actions during an incident and respond to personnel’s emergency preparedness-related inquiries.

What is the Role of Preparedness Champions?

Before an Incident

  • Support the Business Continuity Lead, if applicable, to complete Business Impact Analysis, Business Continuity Plan and Testing/Exercises for all business units.
  • Liaise with responsible officers to ensure preventive/mitigating controls such as generators, fire extinguishers, and agreements with external emergency responders are operational and fully functional.

During an Incident

Preparedness Champions can also assume the duties of Safety Wardens. See the “Safety Wardens Responsibilities Checklist” in the Ready Rating Resource Center.

  • Ensure all personnel are safely directed to the muster point.
  • If safe, check all rooms in the facility to ensure the building is empty.
  • If a disaster/emergency is declared, support the Business Continuity Lead to effectively implement the business continuity plan.
  • Liaise with the Business Continuity Lead to assess the impact of the ongoing incident on the organization.

After an Incident

  • Prepare an after-action report detailing the root cause of the incident, actions taken and recommendations, if applicable.
  • Keep management abreast of the outcome of the incident.
  • Monitor the implementation of recommendations in the after-action report.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Do we have to recruit new personnel as Preparedness Champions?
A. You do not have to recruit new personnel. We recommend engaging with existing personnel or volunteers to identify people interested in taking on this role. For example, existing Safety Wardens could also play the role of Preparedness Champion.

Q. Do Preparedness Champions have to be emergency management subject matter experts?
A. Preparedness Champions do not need to be knowledgeable about business continuity management to take on the role; they only need to be able and willing to carry out their responsibilities. Required training and support will be provided by the organization and/or Business Continuity Lead/designate.