Study finds that security awareness does not translate to preparedness, but there's hope

This week Everbridge, a Shooter Detection Systems partner and leader in critical events management systems, published the results from a survey of organizations on active shooter preparedness, and the results show that although Active Shooter is still a "Top Threat", organizations don't feel much more prepared than they did when surveyed in 2016 despite the training, technology and systems available to them.

Since the 2016 survey, there have been 686 mass shootings involving over 3,100 casualties in the U.S., 810 of which were fatalities, according to the report. Despite these staggering figures, employees feel that leaders in their organizations are less concerned about employee or student safety than they were two years ago. In the 2016 report, the majority of companies (60.5%) reported never running an active shooter drill. The 2018 report shows that this hasn't changed at 62%.

When it comes to being notified of an active shooter emergency, the study shows that four out of five employees "prefer" it take seconds, however two-thirds reported that they thought the actual notification would take minutes to get to them. I'm no statistician, but doesn't it seem that there is a direct correlation here as to why employees are feeling less safe and cared for in the workplace?

Recently Chip Cutter, who writes about workplace issues for the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about corporations who are "quietly" installing gunshot detection systems in U.S. offices. As tragic as mass shootings statistics are, the good news for employees is that although you don't always hear about it, organizations are rapidly adopting gunshot detection systems that enable mass notification systems to get the word out to employees instantly, which is what Shooter Detection Systems' integration with Everbridge does. I hope that the next time we see this report, together we'll have raised employee confidence by seeing an uptick in open dialogue from the top down about what systems organizations are putting in place for their safety.