Sustainability & Risk/ Emergency Preparedness / Background Data

Creating an Escalation Contacts List

Emergencies often accelerate communication and approval cycles; you may not have time to follow your company’s standard procedure for purchase approval or decision-making. In these situations, you may need to bypass your typical procedures and escalate an issue to key members by consulting an escalation contacts list.

For example, once a division’s Recovery Team member verifies employee safety, they may need to obtain immediate approval for purchase orders and capital expenditures in order to get the division operational. A clear and up-to-date escalation list, which lists people who have authority in an emergency to approve decisions and purchases, is important to speed recovery and get business back online.

Similar to how you develop a Recovery Team Member for each division, you can develop each division’s escalation contact list. For each division, you can specify the first, second, and third person to contact for approval over decisions and purchases during an emergency situation.

Note: The Escalation Contacts List is stored in the Recovery Team table. For each division, you can specify up to three escalation contacts. For each division, you can have only one employee in each role (first, second, or third escalation contact).

To develop an Escalations Contacts List for a division:

Select the Define Escalation Contacts task.
The top panel lists the escalation contacts for each division. Choose an escalation to edit, or choose Add New to enter a new escalation.

In the bottom panel, complete the following fields:

Field	Description
Responsible for Division Code	Select a division from the validating Divisions table to indicate the division for which the escalation contact (specified below in the Employee Name field) is responsible.
Recovery Team Role	To indicate that this employee is part of the Escalation List, select First, Second, or Third Escalation Contact to indicate the employee’s position in the chain of command. For example, if this person is the first person to whom a recovery team member should bring an issue for approval, complete this field with "First Escalation Contact." Employee Name – Choose the employee to be part of the escalation list by selecting an employee from the validating Employees table. Note that you can choose any employee to be part of this division’s escalation contact list; you are not limited to selecting an employee whose assigned division matches the value in "Responsible for Division Code."

Field

Description

Responsible for Division Code

Select a division from the validating Divisions table to indicate the division for which the escalation contact (specified below in the Employee Name field) is responsible.

Recovery Team Role

To indicate that this employee is part of the Escalation List, select First, Second, or Third Escalation Contact to indicate the employee’s position in the chain of command. For example, if this person is the first person to whom a recovery team member should bring an issue for approval, complete this field with "First Escalation Contact." Employee Name – Choose the employee to be part of the escalation list by selecting an employee from the validating Employees table. Note that you can choose any employee to be part of this division’s escalation contact list; you are not limited to selecting an employee whose assigned division matches the value in "Responsible for Division Code."

Repeat the above process to specify employees to serve as second and third contacts for this division.