The fire alarm goes off at 2:40 on a Tuesday afternoon. Most people in the building know to leave. Fewer know which exit to use, where to gather or when it's safe to go back in, and the visitor in reception has no idea at all.
An emergency preparedness plan for a business answers those questions before anyone has to ask them. It covers the first minutes of an incident, the way you tell people what to do, and how the business keeps working afterward. The seven steps below draw on official US and UK guidance and show where the screens already on your walls fit into the communication part of the plan.
What an emergency preparedness plan covers
Three terms get used for overlapping documents, so it helps to separate them early.
- Emergency preparedness plan. The umbrella. It covers risk assessment, response, communication, continuity and training. The US Department of Homeland Security's Prepare My Business program builds this kind of program on the NFPA 1600 standard, in five steps from program management to program improvement.
- Emergency action plan. The response part. It sets out what people do in the first minutes, such as evacuating, sheltering or locking down, and who calls the emergency services. Check whether local workplace safety rules set requirements for yours.
- Business continuity plan. The recovery part. Ready.gov puts the goal simply: "Organize a business continuity team and compile a business continuity plan to manage a business disruption."
The UK Cabinet Office makes the case for planning ahead in its Business Continuity Management Toolkit: "Any incident, large or small, whether it is natural, accidental or deliberate, can cause major disruption to your organisation."
Larger organizations sometimes build a full management system around continuity. ISO 22301 is the reference point, and ISO describes it as "the international standard for Business Continuity Management Systems (BCMS)." The current edition dates from 2019. You don't need certification to write a useful plan, and following these steps doesn't make a business compliant with any standard.
Step 1. Assess risks and run a business impact analysis
Start with what could actually happen at your sites. A warehouse, a clinic and a city-center office face different hazards, so list the ones that fit yours: fire, flooding, a power outage, a gas leak, severe weather, a cyber incident, a security threat or a medical emergency.
For each hazard, note how likely it is and what it would stop. The DHS program puts these two tasks together in its planning step, which asks you to "Conduct a business impact analysis (BIA)" alongside assessing risks.
A business impact analysis asks a blunt question about every activity. If this stopped today, how long could we cope? Payroll might survive a week's delay, while a production line or a patient booking system might not survive an afternoon. The answers tell you where to spend planning effort, and they feed directly into step 5.
Step 2. Name the team and decide who activates the plan
A plan without named owners tends to stall at the moment it's needed. Pick an incident lead and a deputy for each site, plus people responsible for communication, facilities, IT and staff welfare.
Write down who has the authority to activate the plan, and in what circumstances. Someone has to be able to say "evacuate" or "stay where you are" without waiting for a meeting. The same goes for messaging. Decide in advance who may send alerts on each channel, so that two people don't send conflicting instructions.
Keep a contact sheet with phone numbers for the team, key suppliers, your building management and the local emergency services. Store a copy somewhere people can reach it if the office systems are down.
Step 3. Write response procedures for evacuation, shelter and lockdown
Response procedures are the emergency action plan in practice. Ready.gov's emergency response plan guidance says plans "should define the most appropriate protective action for each hazard to ensure the safety of employees and others within the building."
For most sites that means at least three procedures.
- Evacuation. Routes, assembly points, who checks each area, and how you account for visitors and contractors.
- Shelter in place. Where people go for severe weather or an outside hazard, and how they know when it's over.
- Lockdown. What staff do if there's a threat inside or near the building, including how to keep the public away from danger.
Keep each procedure short enough to follow under stress. A one-page version for each scenario is easier to train and easier to display than a long document.
Martyn's Law and public-facing UK premises
In the UK, the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, known as Martyn's Law, received Royal Assent on April 3, 2025. The Home Office collection page says it requires those responsible for certain public premises and events "to take reasonably practicable steps to be prepared and ready to keep people safe." Requirements depend on how many people a premises can expect. Read the Home Office guidance to see whether your premises are in scope and what applies to you.
Step 4. Build your emergency communication plan
This is the step most templates leave thin. Ready.gov's instruction is a single line: "Determine how you will warn building occupants to take protective action." An emergency communication plan turns that line into specifics, covering which channels you use, who sends on each one, what the first message says and what happens if a channel fails.
A crisis communication plan sits alongside it and covers the wider audience, such as customers, suppliers, the press and regulators. The table below focuses on the people inside your buildings.
| Channel | Best for | Limits to plan around | Who sends |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire alarm and PA | The first signal to evacuate | Carries a tone or a short phrase, with no detail on routes | Facilities or the incident lead |
| SMS or mass notification | Staff who are offsite or away from desks | Misses visitors and anyone without a registered number | Incident lead or communications |
| Detailed updates and the all-clear | Easy to miss during an incident | Communications or HR | |
| Team chat | Coordinating the response team | Only reaches people who are signed in | Response team |
| Screens in lobbies, corridors and break rooms | Visitors and staff in shared spaces, including people who can't hear an alarm | Only reaches people near a screen, and depends on the screen and network working | Anyone given permission in advance |
| Wardens in person | Checking areas and directing people | Needs trained people on every floor | Fire wardens |
No single channel reaches everyone, so the plan should name a primary channel and at least one backup for each audience. Screens are one channel among several, and they're useful because they can show detail an alarm can't. If your signage already runs on software like Fugo, you can set up emergency alerts on your screens as part of this step.
Where screens fit in lobbies, exits and break rooms
Screens work best where people gather or pass, such as reception, corridors near exits, cafeterias and break rooms. In those places a screen can show which exit to use, where to assemble and when to return.
They also help people who can't hear an alarm well, and visitors who don't know the building. Treat them as a way to add instructions to a warning you've already sent by another channel.
Prewrite messages so nobody designs content mid-incident
Write and approve each message before you need it. A good set covers evacuation, shelter in place, lockdown, a building closure and the all-clear, each with plain wording and a large, readable layout.
In Fugo, a content override lets you "override your existing playlists and instantly take control of your screens," according to Fugo's help guide. With the Loop option, the content plays "until you manually stop it with the Stop button," which suits an alert that has to stay up until the all-clear. Fugo's roles let you decide which users have each permission, which supports the "who sends" column above.
Some alerts start in another system. Fugo's email triggers give each trigger its own inbound address, so a system that can send email can put content on screens the moment something happens.
Plan for outages and what a screen shows if the network drops
Every channel can fail, so test what yours do when something breaks. For screens, find out what each player shows if it loses its connection or its schedule ends, and record the answer in the plan.
A fallback playlist covers one gap. Fugo's help guide says a screen with nothing else scheduled "will automatically play the fallback playlist instead of going blank." For the wider design questions, see the wiki pages on fail-safe emergency messaging and the failover display. Keep the alarm and wardens as the primary warning either way.
Step 5. Plan continuity of critical activities and recovery
Go back to the business impact analysis and take the activities you can least afford to lose. For each one, write how you'd keep it running or restore it, along with who does the work, where they do it and what they need.
The Cabinet Office toolkit frames this as identifying the parts of your organization "that you can't afford to lose" and planning how to maintain them. Typical answers include working from another site, switching to manual processes, moving work to a partner and restoring IT systems from backups.
Record recovery time targets, workarounds, supplier contacts and the order in which you'll bring things back. Include communication here too, since customers and staff will want regular status updates while recovery runs.
Step 6. Train staff, test and run drills
The UK Health and Safety Executive's emergency procedures guidance says people are more likely to respond reliably if they "are well trained and competent," "take part in regular and realistic practice" and "have clearly agreed, recorded and rehearsed plans, actions and responsibilities."
On frequency, the Cabinet Office toolkit says: "As a minimum we would suggest plans are exercised annually." It describes four types of exercise, which are testing, discussion, table-top and live exercises.
Include the communication channels in every drill. Send the prewritten screen messages, check they appear where you expect and time how long it takes to clear them. Between drills, safety signage on the same screens can keep exit routes and assembly points familiar.
Step 7. Review and update the plan
Plans go stale as people leave, phone numbers change and sites are refitted. Set a review date, and also review after every drill, every real incident and every significant change to the business.
The DHS program treats this as its fifth step, program improvement, and asks you to "Identify when the preparedness program needs to be reviewed." Each review should check contact details, channel owners, prewritten messages and whether every screen location in the plan still exists.
A copyable emergency preparedness plan template
Copy this outline into your own document and fill in each line for every site. It works alongside a business continuity plan template if you already have one.
- Scope. Sites, buildings and people covered, with the plan owner and review date.
- Risks. Hazards for each site, with likelihood and impact.
- Business impact analysis. Critical activities and how long each could stop.
- Team. Incident lead, deputies, roles and who can activate the plan.
- Response procedures. Evacuation, shelter in place and lockdown, one page each.
- Emergency communication plan. Channels, owners, prewritten messages, backups and screen locations.
- Continuity and recovery. Workarounds, recovery order and supplier contacts.
- Training and exercises. Drill dates and lessons learned.
- Contacts. Team, suppliers, building management and emergency services.
Frequently asked questions
What should a business emergency preparedness plan include?
Risk assessment, a business impact analysis, a named team, response procedures, an emergency communication plan, continuity and recovery steps, training and a review schedule.
What is the difference between an emergency action plan and a business continuity plan?
An emergency action plan covers what people do in the first minutes of an incident, such as evacuating or sheltering. A business continuity plan covers how the business keeps critical activities running and recovers afterward.
What are the steps in business continuity planning?
Identify critical activities through a business impact analysis, plan how to maintain or restore each one, assign owners, test the plan and review it regularly.
How often should you test or review a business continuity plan?
The UK Cabinet Office toolkit suggests exercising plans at least annually. Review the plan after drills, real incidents and significant business changes too.
How do you warn staff and visitors during an emergency?
Use several channels, such as the alarm and PA, SMS, email, screens and trained wardens. Name a primary and a backup channel for each audience.
Can digital signage be used for emergency alerts?
Yes, as one channel alongside your alarm and other systems. Screens in shared spaces can show instructions such as exit routes and assembly points.
What happens to emergency messages on screens if the internet goes down?
That depends on your players and software, so test it and record the result. Keep the alarm and wardens as the primary warning.
Does Martyn's Law require an emergency plan?
Martyn's Law requires those responsible for certain UK public premises and events to take reasonably practicable steps to be prepared. Check the Home Office guidance for what applies to your premises.
Where to start
Pick one site and work through the seven steps, starting with the communication table. If your screens run on Fugo, set up a content override and a fallback playlist now, so they're ready before an incident. See how emergency alerts work, or start a free trial and test them on one screen.
