The All-Hazards Approach: Emergency Planning Framework

An emergency plan is one of your business’s most crucial safety assets. It prepares you for expected threats and ensures your employees’ safety and business continuity by providing clear instructions on responding to an event such as a natural disaster, cyberattack, active shooter event, or other crisis. But not all emergencies are predictable. The best emergency plan can fall short when faced with an unprecedented situation—unless designed with adaptability in mind.

That’s where an all-hazards approach to preparedness comes in. Think of it as resilience conditioning: instead of trying to predict and plan for every specific threat, you build a flexible response framework that allows your organization to react effectively to any crisis.

“The all hazards piece of it is about, what you haven’t thought of. We don’t know what that next crisis will be,” explains Penny Neferis, Director of Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, & Emergency Response at JetBlue Airlines, in a webinar on the all-hazards approach. “Having a response structure in place and having those people who know they need to respond and make decisions is really what can get any company through any emergency.”

In this post, we’ll walk through how to conduct risk analysis, create response plans, and train your team for all hazards—without the impossible task of planning for every risk scenario.

You can download our All-Hazards Preparedness Guide to kickstart this process.

What Is the All-Hazards Approach?

When planning for response capacities and risk mitigation efforts, the all-hazards approach is a comprehensive emergency preparedness framework considering the full scope of emergencies or disasters. This means you are prepared for “all hazards” your business might face.

The all-hazards approach leads to a better overall emergency preparedness program than focusing on just the most common or impactful critical events. Your business will be more resilient and able to withstand disasters of all kinds.

Pros and Cons of the All-Hazards Approach to Emergency Management

One common misconception is that all-hazards planning means planning for everything that can go wrong with a corresponding catalog of minute details. But that’s not it. Instead, all-hazards planning focuses on developing capacities and capabilities that matter when the going gets tough. You should ensure your business has the training, supplies, and leadership to address a broad range of emergencies rather than trying to plan every step for every specific hazard.

The benefits of an all-hazards plan

The primary benefit of the all-hazards approach is that it prepares your people and emergency resources to be flexible so they can work through any hazard. But there are a few other pros to this strategy:

• Makes your emergency preparedness more effective and scalable
• Turns seemingly monumental tasks into clear, executable initiatives
• Ensures employees have a standard protocol to follow
• Minimizes injury to people and destruction of business property

Limitations of an all-hazards plan

Because not all emergencies are alike, an all-hazards plan does have limitations. A power outage will need much less management than a global pandemic or even a natural disaster that destroys an entire building. The response planning and preparation are very different for these two emergencies.

But remember, the goal of all-hazards planning isn’t to plan the exact response for every emergency. It’s to ensure that you have a foundation for a plan during any crisis. These plans should be flexible and scalable for all possible emergency events.

Develop Your All-Hazards Emergency Plan

1. Identify, assess, and analyze threats

The first step is identifying all potential hazards and their impacts with a business threat assessment. Of course, risks and impacts will vary from location to location and company to company, but here are some of the most common events that require activation of an emergency plan:

2. Build an effective response plan for emergencies

Once you have your list of potential hazards and impacts, determine the specific action steps necessary before an emergency, during the crisis, and in the disaster recovery afterward. This plan may overlap with other emergency management plans or emergency operations plans.

Remember, these plans don’t need to be specifically aligned to every single hazard. But think about the actions that are consistent among the different categories of emergencies, and write down your action plan. Here are a few examples of what that might include.

• Name people responsible for executing the emergency plan
• Create a list of supplies, maintenance, and equipment needed to keep operations going
• Hold employee training classes about emergency plans
• Stock first aid kits and disaster supply kits
• Contact local emergency responders, law enforcement, or aid at local levels as well as national providers like FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)
• Identify communication procedures, and let employees know about emergency situations
• Follow any contingency planning if the situation changes

You can build these action plans into checklists that make it easy to work through the steps at any stage of a crisis.

3. Train and iterate

Training your team on the action plans is a great way to improve your hazard preparedness and increase the likelihood that you’ll be able to execute plans quickly, efficiently, and safely.

Tabletop exercises

Training strategies such as tabletop exercises are good for “dry runs” with low stakes. This gives your employees an idea of what might actually happen in an emergency, and it helps build muscle memory so necessary actions still occur even when tensions are high.

Drills and practice runs

When you want to get a little more tactical, you can run drills for specific situations, such as fire drills and evacuation plans in general, shelter-in-place/active shooter drills, and other full-scale emergency drills. These will allow your employees and safety leaders to practice what they learned during the emergency preparedness planning.

Situational awareness training

You can also conduct situational awareness training so your employees are more aware of their surroundings. Better observation skills can massively boost a business’s overall safety.

Iterate and adapt

Don’t let your plans stagnate. Your risks and your best responses are likely to change with your business. You also may find that your plans didn’t accurately reflect what should be done. Use after-action reports to understand how you can improve and iterate your plans.

4. Optimize communication

One of the most important features of any emergency planning is to ensure the business has a watertight communication plan. Communication is the key to safety and efficient response in every emergency situation since risk management can’t function if you can’t reach your response team or employees to inform them of the risk.

A modern emergency communication system is the best way to strengthen your communication readiness for any hazardous situation. Gone are the days of walkie-talkies, phone trees, and loudspeaker announcements. Today’s workforce is geographically dispersed, with remote workers, traveling employees, and countless others working away from their desks. So you need a reliable way to reach everyone when an emergency strikes.

5. Plan for Recovery

A strong all-hazards preparedness strategy doesn’t end when the immediate crisis is over—recovery is just as critical to ensuring long-term resilience. Effective recovery planning helps businesses resume operations quickly, minimize financial losses, and support employees in transitioning back to normalcy.

• Assess Damage and Prioritize Critical Functions
  Immediately after the incident, conduct a thorough damage assessment to determine operational disruptions, physical damage, and IT system failures. Use your business impact analysis (BIA) to prioritize recovering essential business functions.
• Activate business continuity and disaster recovery plans: A well-documented disaster recovery plan ensures a structured, step-by-step approach to restoring operations that can adapt to different situations. This should include:
  • IT backup and data recovery procedures
  • Alternate supply chain solutions
  • Temporary workspace arrangements for displaced employees
• Support employees during recovery: Employee well-being must be a priority, as you need your people safe and sound throughout the recovery period and beyond. Some options to provide:
  • Clear communication on operational changes and expectations
  • Access to counseling services if the disaster was traumatic
  • Flexible work arrangements if returning to the workplace isn’t immediately feasible
• Document Lessons Learned for Future Resilience
  Keeping detailed incident reports and recovery logs helps organizations refine their response strategies. You should also prepare to conduct a post-incident review or after-action review to evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve for future crises.

By integrating recovery into your all-hazards preparedness plan, you will have a flexible strategy for getting back on track no matter what went wrong and be better equipped to navigate future challenges.

Mitigation Strategies for All Hazards

A strong all-hazards preparedness approach doesn’t just focus on response and recovery—it prioritizes mitigation of threats to minimize risks before they escalate into full-blown crises. Proactive mitigation strategies are foundational to enhanced resilience, regardless of the specific threat. Here are a few strategies for risk mitigation within the all-hazards approach:

Structural and infrastructure enhancements—Investing in resilient infrastructure can help businesses withstand natural and human threats. Measures such as flood barriers, reinforced buildings, fire-resistant materials, and seismic retrofitting reduce the physical impact of hazards.

Cybersecurity and IT protections—Cyber threats are increasingly disruptive to business operations. Implementing strong cyber hygiene practices, such as network segmentation, multi-factor authentication, and regular penetration testing, can mitigate risks from ransomware and data breaches.

Redundant and diversified supply chains—Disruptions from natural disasters, cyberattacks, or geopolitical instability can halt operations. Establishing alternative suppliers, backup inventory locations, and flexible logistics networks ensures continuity even when primary supply chains are compromised.

Workforce safety and training—Human error and lack of preparedness can exacerbate risks. Regular employee training, safety drills, and hazard-awareness programs empower staff to recognize threats early and take preventive action.

The role of the community in mitigation efforts

Mitigation isn’t just an internal effort—it requires collaboration with local communities, government agencies, and industry partners to be truly effective. Businesses should:

• Participate in public-private partnerships to improve emergency planning and resource-sharing.
• Engage in community disaster preparedness programs to enhance regional resilience.
• Share best practices with neighboring businesses and stakeholders to create a collective risk reduction strategy.

Technology Solutions for All Hazards

Supportive technology is one of the best investments you can make in your all-hazards planning. The right technology makes planning and execution much easier, ensuring your organization’s safety, security, and resilience.

​​An alert notification system enables quick and reliable communication around these events, and you’ll have a secure place to store contact records and communication templates to save time and frustration during critical moments. You can also use a threat intelligence solution to better understand what hazards you face. With live alerts from verified sources and the ability to look through historical threats and chat with expert analysts, you’ll have the complete picture of your business’s threat landscape.

Then, you’re ready to plan with the all-hazards approach, the most effective way to ensure you’re prepared to face whatever hazards come your way. Hopefully, you never need to activate your emergency plan, but if you do, your business will be as ready as it can be.