There’s more to consider about the fire register than you might think.
Fire Drills are a necessary evil. Making sure that in the event of a fire, everyone knows what to do and can exit the building quickly and safely should be a priority for every company. A Time & Attendance system should have a reliable fire register so that you have a foolproof method of recording everyone who is onsite and most importantly, that you can get your hands on that fire register no matter what the situation.
Who’s In the Building?
There’s a fire, and you need to know who’s in the building. You may think that the easiest way of doing this is to simply print off a list of everyone who is clocked in. However, this could turn out to be inaccurate. Here’s a few considerations that you need to be aware of:
- If it’s lunch time, who is onsite having lunch and who is offsite?
- Do you have employees who are clocked into work, but are off site running errands or performing tasks for the company?
- If you’ve got visitors onsite, are they accounted for on your register?
- If you have multiple buildings, do you know who is in each of the buildings when the alarm goes off?
As you can see, simply printing off who is clocked in has the potential for missing people who might be onsite. A Time & Attendance system needs to be able to account for these sorts of situations, otherwise the fire register can quickly become inaccurate and the safety of your workforce is compromised, not to mention that audits tend to pick up on these sorts of inconsistencies.
Triggering the Register
If the fire alarm goes off, it would be preferable that the fire register prints off automatically. In most cases this should be possible if you’ve got a fire panel that can be connected to one of your installed clocking machines. As soon as the alarm goes off, multiple copies of the fire register will be printed within seconds. It is then just a case of one of your fire marshalls grabbing a copy on the way out. However, sometimes it isn’t possible to connect the fire panel to the clocking machine (distance being the most common factor), and therefore it’s necessary to have the register printed off manually. To cope with this situation there are two simple and reliable alternatives. The first is for any person to simply enter ‘999’ on the keypad of one of the clocking terminals. The second is to provide a fire register Desktop Icon to selected persons. Clicking the icon automatically instigates the printing process.
How Do I Get The Register?
It is quite common for a company offering a fire register to install a dedicated printer (it often looks a bit like a receipt printer). When there’s a fire, the list automatically prints out on that machine. However, this can be fraught with issues. What if the printer jams? How will you get the register if it runs out of ink? Worse, what if the fire is right where the fire printer is located? In all cases, you lose your fire register. Systems that provide you with multiple methods to provide a fire register are always best as you have a contingency plan in case of something going wrong. Using the printers you already use in your company is a perfect way of getting around this issue. If the fire register doesn’t print at one of the printers for some reason, then you always have others copies available. “You cannot have too many fire registers!” Another back-up is to have a system capable of sending the fire register as an email, which is then accessed via a mobile device, such as a phone or tablet. All it requires is for the person(s) receiving the email to remember to pick up their mobile device as they leave (something that people tend to make sure they have in the event of a fire drill anyway!)
It may seem like there’s the risk of over compensating when it comes to the fire register, but when it comes to the risk and danger of fire, the safety of your workforce (and let’s be honest, keeping the auditors happy) there’s no such thing as over planning. It’s much better to be over prepared than under prepared. It’s a bit like fire extinguishers; it’s much better to have many and never use them, rather than desperately needing one and then not having any.
