Payton Kolbeck 
While an emergency mass notification system can improve safety outcomes during a crisis, far too many workers still lack access to real-time updates. How will your workers fare in an emergency with your current safety plan? When seconds count, will your workers have all the information they need to reach their muster points quickly?
Whether it’s severe weather, an out-of-control fire, or any other active threat, weavix® ensures the delivery of mass notifications to everyone in your facility at the push of a button. And these alerts on our Walt® Smart Radio System can be customized for a wide variety of emergencies, so you can keep everyone informed and safe no matter what.
Key highlights:
- The best mass notification system ensures the delivery of critical alerts during emergencies, which can make all the difference in an industrial setting.
- See exactly who received and acknowledged every mass alert, so you can improve your emergency response plans. The more visibility you have, the better you can prepare for dangerous situations in the future.
- Walt does more than just send alert notifications. Our digital communication platform connects everyone in your facility during normal work days and emergencies alike.
Let’s explore five ways an emergency mass notification system can protect your team from danger.
1. Keep your Frontline Workers and Contractors Informed During an Emergency
It’s right up there with every site manager’s worst nightmares.
One of our customers is a well-known American brand, and they had recently provided Walt Smart Radios to everyone at one of their warehouses. One day, an employee’s former partner used her parking sticker to get past the guard at the front gate. The unauthorized visitor made it into the facility before the company’s manager knew what was happening.
The manager took a picture of the trespasser on his Walt device and sent an alert notification to everyone in the warehouse. There was a huge buzz around the warehouse, and the response was immediate. The unwanted visitor was swiftly escorted off the premises, all thanks to real-time updates from Walt.
With Walt’s emergency notification service, you can send important safety information to your crews instantly. And in the most severe cases, this information can be the difference between life or death.
Information and timeliness are the two most important factors when it comes to an alerting system for the frontline. When there’s a crisis in your facility, your workers need the right information at the right time in order to reach safety as fast as possible. When you send out emergency notifications to everyone’s Walt Smart Radio, you can share necessary information and remain in constant contact with your team, even in the most severe incidents.
Keep reading: Explore the top benefits of workforce danger alert systems
2. Target and Deliver Emergency Mass Notifications Instantly
Manufacturing, construction, and other industrial worksites can extend for hundreds of acres and employ thousands of people. While it’s crucial to inform everyone on-site of events that could impact the entire facility, many companies also need the flexibility to target certain areas with customized mass notifications.
For example, if there was a chemical leak which could endanger workers in nearby units, a targeted alert notification could be sent to those employees based on geofencing data. However, it would be overkill to warn everyone in that facility of the spill right that moment. If the spill poses no danger to workers at the opposite end of the plant, then any alert they receive would only waste time and create an unnecessary interruption.
“In the event of an evacuation or emergency, we needed a way to quickly confirm muster points for associates outside of the facility. You know, for fire drills or ammonia-related drills where we must evacuate. The two-way radios were ineffective because of the channel interference that we experienced. There could be one incident, and weavix would have paid for itself.”
— Derrick Carter, General Manager at Americold
When necessary, our emergency notification software allows you to target specific units, areas, or locations in your facility before sending a notification to all workers. Each notification is delivered instantly to every Walt Smart Radio, which will override any in-use devices and activate any inactive ones.
3. Improve Emergency Response Plans and Processes
Within the Walt Smart System, which is the world’s first Internet of Workers (IoW) platform, you can access a record of all emergency mass notifications that you’ve sent to workers in your facility at any given time. Within this information, you can easily look back and see how your team responded to each notification, learn what worked, and what you and your team can improve:
- See when each worker received and acknowledged the emergency alert
- Check how long it took everyone to reach the muster point
- Combine these data and look for areas to improve
Why Should You Get Started Using the Walt Smart Radio System Right Away?
The more data you track through the Walt Smart Radio System, the more valuable this data will be. In time, this will allow you to create a better employee experience and improve your emergency response plans. You’ll be able to gain insights that are only possible with Walt, as long as you start collecting this data in the secure cloud now.
This system of record lets you determine the effectiveness of your safety protocols and SOPs. These details are essential for digital-savvy manufacturing companies and their leadership teams, and you can’t get insights like these from legacy two-way radio systems by Motorola.
Our growing list of customers has used our mass notification system both to validate their emergency preparedness plans and develop more efficient safety guidelines for thousands of workers across the nation.
4. Respond Quickly to Emergencies in Your Facility with Mass Notifications
Five minutes.
That’s how much time our customer Americold shaved off their safety response time across their 1-million square foot facility. In stark terms, when seconds count, five minutes could be the difference between a smooth evacuation and a horrible tragedy.
The sooner your workers know about a critical situation, the faster they can respond. If there’s a fire, you can simply use the mass notification software to alert workers of the closest evacuation point (it’s exactly why our customers say Walt is simple, safe, and smart).
If your team members are unsure of how to respond or are unable to evacuate, safety officials and managers can quickly help them escape through an alternate route with our frontline communication solutions.
Walt creates a network of accountability that connects everyone in your facility through our digital communication platform. And during an emergency, that makes all the difference when it comes to safety.
With a traditional emergency notification system for businesses, communication only flows in one direction. So, when frontline workers are alerted to a crisis, they must remember the emergency plan themselves. But emergency communication is always a two-way street in the most effective safety plans. Walt makes this a reality in critical events, no matter what languages your workers speak or where they’re located on your worksite.
Keep reading: Understand why you should equip your workforce with a man-down system
5. Increase Visibility on Emergencies in Your Facilities
“Copy, what was that? Over.”
“Copy, you’re breaking up, over.”
Missed messages like this can be disastrous in an emergency. With Walt’s emergency notification system, your workers will never miss a thing.
Any industrial team can use Walt’s mass communication system to validate and improve their emergency response plans. When you send a mass notification, every Walt you’ve specified will sound the alarm at once:
- It doesn’t matter if someone’s Walt is in use or in sleep mode, the alert will override everything
- Contractors and frontline employees will all receive the same notifications
- Easily send mass alerts in 20+ common languages and dialects
When you combine all these factors, there’s a much higher chance that everyone will receive the mass notification in time. We designed Walt to make it easier for you to get everyone’s attention in the event of an emergency. Any event worthy of an alert requires enterprise-wide collaboration to get to safety quickly without any unnecessary delays.
But this only works if everyone gets your alert notifications every time. And that means everyone on site needs a smart radio.
Walt Does More Than Send Emergency Mass Notifications
Industrial mass notifications are only a part of what Walt can do for you and your team. Walt is there for you and your workers every moment of every day. In an emergency, Walt is the easiest way for you to send real-time alerts to your team. And during their normal workflow, Walt gives your workers many different ways to collaborate:
- AI language translation and transcription across 20+ common languages
- Push-to-talk, picture, and video (PT3) for instant verification
- Unlimited range
We built Walt so your team could collaborate more efficiently and enjoy a better frontline employee experience. And all of this is meant to serve one goal: keep your workers as safe as possible. When everyone on your team has a Walt Smart Radio, you create a network of accountability on the frontline.
To see how Walt can work for you, contact weavix today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a mass notification system?
A mass notification system can deliver real-time updates to any number of workers on your team in case of an emergency. The best platforms in this category allow you to customize these alerts for workers in specific areas, workers on specific teams, or everyone on the worksite at once. These solutions also allow you to classify different types of emergencies according to their severity, so your workers will always know exactly what they have to do to stay safe.
Mass notification systems allow you to alert all your workers about safety risks before they become a threat. These solutions represent a huge improvement over safety plans designed solely for manual processes, signs, and sirens, because the former let you share important context with each alert. When seconds count, look for platforms that let you share the most relevant information with your workers as quickly and smoothly as possible.
What is the difference between alarms and industrial mass notifications?
Industrial mass notifications and alarms differ dramatically in two fundamental ways: customizability and context. These differences show up in several different areas:
| Industrial Mass Notifications sent through Walt Smart Radio System | Safety Alarm Systems | Winner |
|---|---|---|
Easily send targeted notifications to individuals, groups, or workers in specific locations | Alert everyone within earshot every time, or nothing | Walt wins on customizability and context, since you can send a detailed warning to any group of workers in just a few seconds. |
Provide instant audio and visual context depending on the type/severity of the emergency | Context is based upon a wide range of different auditory signals that workers must decipher in the moment, which wastes precious seconds | Walt wins on customizability and context again, since you can describe the exact nature of the emergency with no ambiguity. |
Send alerts in any of 20+ common languages and dialects, so everyone knows exactly what to do in an emergency | No translations, just the same series of complex auditory signals for everyone | Walt wins on customizability and context in this case, too, by removing language barriers for clear communication. |
Emergency notification systems allow you to share the most relevant, timely information with everyone on your team, instantly. On the other hand, safety alarm systems prevent you from including important context with each alert. Alarms were the only option until recently. When seconds count, now you have better options for frontline safety solutions.
What is the best emergency notification software for businesses?
The best emergency notification software for business is what lets you customize alerts so only affected workers receive updates with complete context in the employees’ preferred language.
In case of a chemical leak which only affects workers in a certain section of your plant, a platform like the Walt Smart Radio System allows you to easily send targeted alert notifications to just those employees. This prevents unnecessary interruptions for everyone else.
Of course, the most flexible emergency notification systems also let you alert everyone at your worksite, or even employees on specific teams. This customizability lets you fine tune your emergency response, so you can balance safety and productivity for everyone at your facility.
Which types of mass alert notifications does Walt support?
The Walt Smart Radio System by weavix supports three types of mass alert notifications:
- Informational alerts, including general, non-emergency information like shift changes or maintenance schedules
- Warnings, which signify impending threats like tornadoes and blizzards or unsafe road conditions
- Danger alerts, designed for emergencies that demand immediate action, like fires, chemical spills, or other life-threatening hazards in your facility
The urgency of the AI voice which dictates the alarm notification is related to the severity of the alert. Also, keep in mind that the alert volume is based on ringer volume, which is set by each worker. For each type of alert, Walt notifies workers in three different ways:
- Audible alarm signal that overrides every other action on each worker’s device, whether their smart radio is in use or asleep
- Verbalized messages that warn workers of the specific threat, delivered in each employee’s preferred language
- Visual notification of the threat type, which instantly appears on Walt’s super bright full-color touchscreen
Walt’s emergency notification system also lets you select recipients for each alert, from the whole plant down to a specific individual. And all of these alerts include guaranteed delivery confirmation, so you can validate your safety plans and make improvements for the next time.
Keep reading: Alert Types on the weavix Help Center
How does the Walt mass emergency notification system work?
The Walt mass emergency notification system lets plant managers, safety managers, or any approved facility admin quickly notify their entire workforce of threats to their safety. Our permission-based platform lets you tailor each alert to the severity and urgency of the situation. You can easily manage the alert type from the Walt Web Console, which is the admin platform of the Walt Smart Radio System.
Mass communication systems like Walt complement safety signs and alarm systems. Walt offers real-time information, so crucial in the event of an emergency. When seconds count, count on Walt.
Keep reading: Mass Alerts on the weavix Help Center
How can I track who acknowledged the mass notification using Walt Smart Radio System?
As soon as you issue a mass notification in the Walt Web Console, a banner will display how many people received the alert. From there, you can see a complete list of every worker who received the emergency notification with a few clicks. The system also gives you clear options to determine who acknowledged the alert and when.
But Walt is far more than just an emergency notification for business. The Walt Smart Radio System is a complete frontline communication platform that improves productivity, collaboration, and safety across your entire enterprise. Walt’s alerts give your employees everything they need to act quickly in case of danger, but that’s only the beginning.
