Question

What has been the most difficult emergency response related policy implemented in a department? What can be done to improve the implementation of that policy?

Answer 1

I believe that the policies that require permission of your manager/senior before being put into action are the most difficult ones in case of emergencies.

Just to quote an example from my experience, I used to work with a manufacturing company a couple of years back in operations department. Now operations department is full of complications and any little mishap could lead to serious problem. One of those times, the floor area caught fire due to an unfortunate system failure, and to take action related to any system failure it was important to take permission from the department manager, who at that moment was on a leave. The situation got a little worse and we were forced to take actions ourselves without his permission. The policy was changed (relaxed) after that incident, but one thing it did was it taught us all about importance of relaxed emergency policies.

The policies under emergency situations, I believe, should be as relaxed as possible. Of course because of that the system would be left exposed to certain loopholes, but at least the life of the workers and employees wouldn't be at danger.

Hence, I believe that policies that require permission from the manager/senior under emergencies are the most difficult ones to implement.