Employee Emergency Response Plan: A Template for Indian Offices and Field Teams

Most companies have a fire evacuation plan pinned to a wall. Far fewer have a plan for what happens when an employee has an emergency somewhere else: a road accident on the way to a client, a medical emergency in a hotel room, a threat at a site, an employee who simply does not come back.

This template covers both. Copy it, replace the parts in brackets, and run it once as a drill before you need it.

The plan in one paragraph

An alert reaches a named person at once. That person takes ownership, reaches the employee, calls for help if needed, and keeps everyone else informed. If they do not respond, the alert moves to the next person by itself. Every incident ends with a recorded outcome.

1. Roles

Role	Who	Job
Safety Desk	[Name or team, with night cover]	Receives every SOS at once, takes ownership, coordinates the response
Reporting manager	The employee’s manager	First call for a missed check-in, knows the employee and the visit
Site contact	[Per site]	Physical help at the site, knows the local hospital and police station
Incident lead	[Senior person on call]	Decisions beyond the desk: outside help, travel, statements
Family liaison	[HR person]	The only person who calls the employee’s family, with facts
Plan owner	[Name]	Keeps this plan and its contacts up to date

2. Emergency numbers

Service	Number
All emergencies (police, fire, ambulance)	112
Ambulance (most states)	108
Fire	101
Women helpline (most states)	181
Safety Desk	[Number, answered at all hours]
Nearest hospital to each site	[Name, number, address]

Check each number works in each city where you have people.

3. How an alert starts

An emergency reaches the Safety Desk in one of three ways:

1. The employee raises an SOS. It should work without unlocking the phone and without mobile data.
2. A check-in is missed. The employee was due back and has not confirmed they are safe. The escalation starts by itself (see section 5).
3. Someone else reports it. A colleague, a site contact or a member of the public calls the desk.

4. What to do, by emergency

Medical emergency

• Call the employee. If they cannot talk, call 108 or 112 with their location.
• Send the nearest colleague or site contact.
• Share health details only with the people treating them, and only if the employee has chosen to keep them for emergencies.

Road accident

• Call 112 with the location.
• Reach the employee or the driver. Find out who is hurt and where they are being taken.
• Send someone to the hospital. Do not ask the employee to deal with the police or the other party alone.

Threat, harassment or feeling unsafe

• Treat every alert as real until you know otherwise. Do not wait for proof.
• Call the employee. If they cannot talk, ask yes or no questions, or call 112 with the location.
• Send help in pairs. Responders reach the person and call 112; they never confront anyone.
• Afterwards, if it involves harassment at work, inform the Internal Committee under the POSH Act.

Missing employee (missed check-in, no answer)

• Follow the escalation in section 5.
• Check the last known location, the site visited and the transport used.
• If there is still no contact after [60] minutes, the incident lead decides on calling the police.

Natural disaster or local unrest

• Account for every employee in the affected area: ask each to confirm they are safe.
• Tell people to stay where they are if moving is more dangerous.

5. Escalation

Level	Who	When	What they do
1	Reporting manager	At once	Call the employee
2	Head of department	After [5] minutes	Call the employee and the manager
3	Safety Desk	After [10] minutes	Take ownership, check the last location
4	Incident lead	After [20] minutes	Decide on outside help

An SOS skips the ladder and goes straight to the Safety Desk. The escalation stops when one person takes ownership, and everyone else on the ladder sees who has it. More detail in our escalation matrix template.

6. Communication

• One owner speaks. The person who took ownership updates the others. Nobody else calls the employee unless asked.
• Family: only the family liaison calls, and only with confirmed facts.
• Outside the company: no statements without the incident lead.

7. Records

Every incident is closed with:

• what happened, where and when,
• when the alert started, who took ownership and how fast,
• what was done,
• the outcome: safe, false alarm, helped by a colleague, police, hospital.

Review them monthly. Look for slow steps, repeat locations and false alarms that point to a training gap.

8. Drills

Twice a year in the office, once a year for each field team: an employee raises a test alert at an agreed time, and you time each step. One drill finds more gaps than a month of reading the plan.

Plan owner: [name]. Last reviewed: [date].

How ORBII Teams runs this plan

ORBII Teams does sections 3, 5 and 7 by itself.

• Alerts: SOS by button, by voice or with a silent shake, and by text message without data. Missed back-by times on trips start the escalation automatically.
• The Safety Desk gets a phone alert, a browser alert and a full-screen alarm, with the employee’s location.
• Escalation up to five levels, each with its own minutes, and a Take ownership button everyone can see.
• Help nearby: the 10 nearest colleagues within 5 km, and approved company responders close by, are alerted when someone raises an SOS.
• Records: each incident has a timeline and an outcome, kept in the audit log.
• Privacy: location only during a trip or an SOS, and health information never reaches the employer.

Read about ORBII for field and lone workers, or the lone worker policy template.