Conducting regular emergency drills is crucial to the safety of your church. But without evaluation, you cannot improve your efforts the next time around. These immediate ‘after-action’ discussions and assessments following a safety drill include several phases to make sure your next training exercise is even better.
Evaluation with the Church Congregation
Directly following your drill, gather your church congregation into either the fellowship hall or sanctuary to discuss the drill performance. Select one person from your emergency response team to lead out the discussion and have another team member record the feedback. This input will be useful in future evaluation and planning.Ask your congregation:
- What are some strength areas for this drill?
- What is something we did well?
- How can we make improvements?
- Did we forget something that needs to be included in our next drill?
- Any additional thoughts on the drill and how it was carried out?
Evaluation with Your Team and Church Leaders
It is important to give leaders the opportunity to provide feedback because they offer different experiences. Since you stationed leaders in various areas of your church, this will provide a different perspective than the general church discussion.Review and Improve
After collecting the feedback, it’s time to review and improve. Start by organizing and categorizing the feedback by topic such as the promotion of the event, actual drill, resources provided, etc. Then, as a team, discuss the comments in each subject and what can be done to fix any issues or improve these areas.Next, write down action steps and deadlines next to each step to make sure you implement these ideas for improvement. Decide on a follow-up date to discuss completed actions, and plans for unfinished tasks. Present this information, including the evaluation and action steps, to the church board. Finish the presentation by selecting a date later in the year for the church’s next drill!
Take the Survey
Finally, complete the Adventist Risk Management Inc. (ARM) Safety Sabbath Survey. Your response allows ARM to review and improve its efforts. By conducting your drill and completing the survey, you will receive an official completion certificate from ARM. Be sure to fill out the survey by April 12!For more information on Safety Sabbath, visit Safety Sabbath.com.
