System to alert MORC employees of emergencies

Macomb-Oakland Regional Center has implemented, as of Sept. 1, an alert system to notify employees of “an urgent or emergent nature.”

The Mass Notification System provides an automated progressive alert system to be utilized to send to multiple device notifications of an emergency involving the community.

The system will be used to notify staff at both the Clinton Township and the Auburn Hills offices of emergency situations such as weather warnings, weather delays or closures, as well as emergency preparedness notification and drills. The system will be tested on a quarterly basis.

Once a staff member receives an alert by office telephone, email or cellphone, the staffer must respond by sending an email or telephone call as soon as possible. The system will keep sending alerts until the MORC worker responds.

The system “will prompt a MORC employee and instruct them on how to respond by either email or phone to acknowledge receipt of the emergency message,” said Human Resources Manager Cathy Gibson.

“This will be yet another building block toward maintaining a safe, happy, and healthy work environment,” she said in an Aug. 20 email to MORC workers.

Initial data such as phone numbers, email address, and personal telephone number from MORC employees will be loaded into the Mass Notification System. A form accompanied the email in which workers provided all contact information which will be kept confidential, Gibson said.

Jerry Wolffe is the Writer in Residence/Rights Advocate at Large at the Macomb-Oakland Regional Center.