Are you a business owner, manager, CEO, president, safety manager, or someone in authority in your company?  If so, you should know the answer to the two questions in the title – what is an EAP and do you need one?  The short answer is an EAP is an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) and the answer is YES, you need one.  Now let me ask one more question – does your company have an EAP?  Let’s get back to that question in a moment.

An Emergency Action Plan is a written document REQUIRED by OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.38 that defines your employees’ actions during an emergency.  An EAP is direction for your employees, it is not a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) or Disaster Recovery (DR) Plan to recovery your business or IT operations.  The standard has minimum elements you must address including emergency reporting procedures, evacuation processes, employee accountability and also other recommended elements.  From my experience in developing EAPs for different organizations and training their personnel on those procedures, I have a list of additional topics to address that will increase the value of your EAP rather than just meeting the minimums. 

Friday the 13^th – the day of bad luck, ill omens, and the risk of terrible events.  The day that has inspired bad movies, practical jokes, and spooky ghost stories.  So, did anything bad happen to you today?  Did you stub your toe, break your arm, or get an audit letter from the IRS?  No – that’s good.  What about at work, at your business, anything frightening or catastrophic happen there today?  No again, well great – you’re safe until the next Friday the 13^th because everyone knows that bad things ONLY happen on Friday the 13^th.  Right?