During the First 30 Seconds of a Crisis, How Will Your Staff React?

Getting non-security personnel to appreciate the importance of emergency preparedness and to appropriately respond when an incident occurs are two of the biggest challenges facing campus security pros. If you are responsible for protecting a school, you understand the issues that non-custodial parents, angry neighbors, inclement weather, medical issues and more can present, but would your teachers, administrators and other staff know how to respond? If they haven’t been trained, they might not have a clue.

You could hire a consultant to train your staff, but this option can have its challenges. The first one is consistency: emergency response skills are perishable and need to be practiced regularly. Once the consultant finishes his or her contract with your campus or district, who will continue to provide training, and will it be as effective as the consultant’s training?

Another issue is timing: often when a school hires a consultant, his or her services are provided in a couple of intensive, lengthy sessions that can be overwhelming and put more stress on a teacher’s hectic schedule. A third is cost: training delivered in person by a consultant can cost thousands of dollars, further straining a district or campus’s limited budget.

To address these and other challenges associated with emergency preparedness training, CS has just launched Campus Safety HQ, an online training resource and community. When you become a member, you will learn from world-renown campus emergency management, security and law enforcement experts on a wide variety of critical issues. Doing so will enable you to add realism to your training programs and develop buy-in from campus and community stakeholders so they take safety seriously.

Whether you are a public safety official, security director, emergency manager or administrator, Campus Safety HQ will help you conduct more meaningful, budget-friendly and frequent trainings that can be done at locations and times that are convenient for you and your organization. When you sign up for this training service, you will receive:

• Action plans designed to help you more effectively train personnel and create a culture of safety and security on campus
• Mobile and tablet-friendly streaming videos to use anywhere, anytime that add realism to your training programs
• Supporting documents, templates and more.

A great example of Campus Safety HQ’s content is the First 30 Seconds series, which provides realistic, school-specific crisis scenarios, facilitator videos, staff training videos and assessment tools that challenge staff to mentally work through a wide variety of emergencies. Developed by long-time CS contributors Michael and Chris Dorn of Safe Havens International, the First 30 Seconds will help your staff develop the skills they need to quickly respond when an actual crisis occurs.

Other videos on CampusSafetyHQ.com cover active shooters, how to reduce risk and improve response times, leadership training and more.

We all know that training is a critical component of campus protection. You can adopt the most advanced policies, procedures and security technologies available, but they won’t work well – or, in some cases, at all – if your community doesn’t know how to do its part. Becoming a member of Campus Safety HQ will help you bridge this gap.

For more information on Campus Safety HQ, click here.

Get started for just $1

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