Employee Poll: How Are Agencies Doing When It Comes to Duty of Care?

Ensuring continuity of operations. Safeguarding critical infrastructure. Maintaining regulatory compliance. These are top priorities for organizations within all levels of government. But it becomes harder when critical events occur.

Government leaders need the right tools and technology to keep our communities safe and secure and running efficiently. What’s perhaps even more important than the right tools are the people. Protecting these essential employees ensures the continuity of services required to protect the public, day in and day out.

Government leaders not only have a duty to keep the public safe and informed – they also have a duty of care to their employees. Meeting this responsibility starts with effective, rapid, reliable communication so you can keep your essential workers safe and informed during an emergency.

Wondering how government agencies are performing when it comes to duty of care? We surveyed more than 1,000 full-time employees, including state, local, and federal workers, along with full-time employees in multiple industries, to discover their expectations and preferences around employer responsibility and emergency communication.

Leaders can use our top findings to identify strengths and weaknesses and create an action plan to improve duty of care and, ultimately, public safety.

Finding 1: Government employees feel their employer is responsible for their safety – during and after working hours.

Eighty-five percent of government workers surveyed feel their employer is responsible for their safety when they are on-site or in-office during working hours. Additionally, 38 percent of agency workers feel their employer is responsible for their safety when traveling for work during office hours. That’s slightly higher than what our survey found for all full-time workers – 82 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

Government employees also feel their employer’s responsibility for their safety continues outside of working hours during the following situations:

  • When traveling for work outside of office hours (32%)
  • At work-sponsored functions (holiday parties, happy hours, team building events, etc.) (30%)
  • On-site or in-office outside of working hours (29%)

Takeaway: When it comes to duty of care, government agencies are never off the clock. Agency leaders should have processes and technology in place to notify employees about potential threats and the steps they should take to keep themselves safe, even after regular hours of operation.

2024 Employee Safety Survey

Discover employee perceptions and expectations when it comes to communication and safety in the workplace. Read insights gathered from our survey of over 1,000 in-office, hybrid, fully-remote and lone workers to improve your safety initiatives and enhance employee satisfaction.

Finding 2: Physical threats can have a cascading impact on operational continuity and public safety.

Physical threats pose a risk to the safety of essential government workers as well as to the larger mission of operational continuity, protection of critical infrastructure, and public safety. Yet more than half (52 percent) of all full-time workers have experienced a physical threat during working hours, and nearly half (49 percent) have experienced a physical threat outside of working hours.

When asked about the impacts these physical threats had, emotional/mental distress was at the top of the list among all full-time workers, both during working hours (29 percent) and outside of working hours (34 percent).

Likewise, government employees reported the top impact of physical threats experienced outside of working hours was emotional/mental distress. However, they felt differently about the impact of such events during working hours. Instead, government workers said the biggest impacts of physical threats experienced during working hours were:

  • Loss of productivity/Unplanned downtime (28%)
  • Emotional/Mental distress (26%)
  • Physical injury (17%)

Takeaway: Regardless of when physical threats occur, they can have physical and emotional impacts that can prevent essential workers from performing their jobs, creating an increased risk to public safety and continuity of critical infrastructure operations.

Finding 3: Multimodal communication is the best way to ensure messages are received during an emergency.

When deciding how you will communicate with your employees during an emergency, it’s important to take their preferences into account.

Seventy-two percent of government workers said their employer uses work phone, email, or messaging apps to communicate with them during an emergency, and more than half (56 percent) said their employer uses work email specifically. The results are similar among all full-time employees, with 74 percent saying their employer uses work phone, email, or messaging apps to communicate with them during an emergency, and 56 percent reporting their employer uses work email specifically.

However, like all full-time workers, government employees prefer personal email or phone. That said, work-based methods are still preferred by some employees. Our survey uncovered the following:

  • 77% of government employees and 79% of all full-time employees prefer personal email or phone
  • 49% of government employees and 52% of all full-time employees prefer work phone, email, or messaging app

Takeaway: Despite the overall preference for personal channels, the survey results reveal preferences are strong enough among multiple channels to make multimodal communication the smart choice. Fortunately, this aligns with the best practice of using out-of-band and multimodal communication during an emergency to ensure messages are received in case one channel becomes unavailable.

Duty of Care Agency Self-Assessment

As you review the top findings from our employee safety survey, it’s an opportunity to take a step back and assess your agency’s processes and technology when it comes to duty of care and emergency mass notification.

Ask yourself:

  • Do I have a plan in place to keep employees safe and informed during an emergency?
  • Do I know my employees’ preferred methods of communication?
  • Can I communicate with my employees on both work and personal devices?
  • Can I send geotargeted notifications to employees located in or traveling to specific locations?

While these questions are just a starting point, they can help your agency ensure you meet your duty of care for the people tasked with protecting our communities and keeping operations running smoothly. But don’t stop here. Download the full survey results to learn more about full-time workers’ expectations and preferences and show your essential employees just how essential they are. 

OnSolve

OnSolve® is a leading critical event management provider that proactively mitigates physical threats, allowing organizations to remain agile when a crisis strikes. Using the most trusted expertise and reliable AI-powered risk intelligence, critical communications and incident management technology, the OnSolve Platform enables enterprises, SMB organizations and all levels of government to detect, anticipate and mitigate physical threats that impact their people, places and property. With billions of alerts sent annually and proven support for both the public and private sectors, OnSolve is used by thousands of entities to save lives, protect communities, safeguard critical infrastructure and enable agility for the organizations that power our economy.