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In this guest blog post, Vipassana Prashant Mahale, Senior Quality Assurance Engineer at Avista Information Systems, examines the business consequences of ineffective crisis management and how Avista in the Microsoft Teams app marketplace can upgrade your crisis readiness.

Consider a normal Tuesday. Everything appears normal, including meetings and all employees at their workstations, until the ground begins to tremble. Desks shake. Monitors fall. The building creaks. It’s an earthquake.

During the panic, employees rush around. Some cover their heads; others run for shelter. Many freeze, unsure of where the safe zones are. Leadership struggles to check spreadsheets, group chats, and call logs to verify who’s OK. Every minute wasted increases the risk of harm.

This isn’t hypothetical. This occurs too frequently. For example, in 2022 an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 struck Northern California. Businesses were struggling to locate their staff and get back up and running. In addition to earthquakes, here are some other incidents:

Active shooters: From 2019 to 2023, the FBI documented over 229 mass shootings in the United States. Workplaces are regularly the targets of attacks. Life is at grave risk in the absence of immediate alerts, clear shelter instructions, and real-time visibility into everyone’s safety.

Pandemic outbreak: The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how quickly a health crisis can disrupt business operations and employee safety. Having fast safety checks and clear communication protocols during such outbreaks is critical to keep employees informed and safe and to ensure business continuity.

Extreme weather conditions: Every year, millions of workers are disrupted by hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. The results can be fatal when safety procedures are not followed or evacuation alerts are not sent.

If an emergency arises today, is your organization ready? Failing to track employee safety status, issue timely alerts, or maintain incident dashboards can lead to serious business consequences — far beyond a moment of confusion.

4 business risks of not being crisis-ready

Delayed emergency response and increased casualties: Without real-time employee safety checks, companies lose critical minutes locating missing workers — time that often determines survival. For example, a nitrogen leak in 2021 at Foundation Food Group in Georgia, USA, killed six workers because no gas detection alarms sounded, no digital muster system accounted for employees, and rescue teams didn’t know who was missing. In the aftermath, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board called it “preventable” and families sued for wrongful death. Settlements went undisclosed (CSB final report).

Regulatory fines and legal liability: Regulators penalize companies that can’t prove they monitored employee safety. OSHA fined Foundation Food Group and three of its contractors more than $1 million for 26 violations, including failure to train workers on hazards, failure to install alarm systems, and failure to establish emergency protocols (OSHA penalty announcement).

Operational downtime and financial loss: Unaccounted workers freeze operations, delaying recovery by days or weeks. After Hurricane Ian in 2022, businesses using manual check-ins took three times longer to resume operations, whereas companies with real-time dashboards (e.g., Walmart and Verizon) restored 80% of operations within 48 hours (Lee County’s Hurricane Ian after action report from August 2023).

Reputation damage and employee distrust: Failure to act or communicate during a crisis erodes trust — both internally and externally — resulting in long-term damage to brand and morale. During Winter Storm Uri, which struck Texas in February 2021, poor outreach and accountability led to public backlash, utility provider criticism, and the resignation of four ERCOT board members.

When emergencies hit, outdated or disconnected protocols can lead to confusion, delays, and serious consequences.

Meet Safety Check, a modern crisis management tool

Safety Check is a real-time crisis management tool built for today’s dynamic, distributed teams. It enables businesses to react to crises quickly and intelligently, all within Microsoft Teams.
•    Real-time safety checks and SOS alerts
•    Live status dashboards (Who’s safe? Who needs assistance?)
•    SMS fallback for employees who are not online
•    No additional logins—works in Microsoft Teams natively.

Whether facing an active shooter, a wildfire, or a cyberattack, leadership has instant visibility: Who’s safe, who needs help, and what’s happening now?

Click here to know more about the crisis management tool for Microsoft Teams.

Real-time Microsoft Teams alerts and Azure scalability

Avista works with Microsoft Teams for managing employee safety and emergency response.

SOS alerts and safety checks: Team members can send emergency alerts and reply to safety checks directly within Teams, eliminating the need for additional tools.

SMS integration for offline access: When internet access is limited or unavailable, safety check-ins can be sent via SMS to ensure no one misses out.

Instant notifications and escalations: Real-time alerts, bulletins, and follow-ups are delivered via Microsoft Teams messages, assuring visibility and prompt response.

Admin dashboard in Teams: Get a real-time perspective of team safety, including who needs assistance, who is safe, and who has not answered. Manage all incidents in one place, mark people as safe, and take action directly from Teams, using phone, message, or video chat. Simply close, delete, or duplicate instances as needed.

Safety Check is fully hosted on Microsoft Azure, which provides enterprise-grade security and dynamic scalability. From encrypted SOS notifications to incident records, all data is securely saved and managed in a compliant, trusted cloud environment that is ready to scale when emergencies arise.

The expansive impact of Safety Check

Avista’s Safety Check tool transforms emergency management by providing employee safety checks directly within Microsoft Teams and scaling them securely with Microsoft Azure. This integration is not just about convenience: It delivers measurable impact, dramatically improving response times, employee participation, and incident outcomes across thousands of organizations.
•    Over 38,000 safety checks have been sent, each created in under 60 seconds.
•    384 SOS alerts have been triggered to date, each immediately visible to admins within Microsoft Teams.
•    Safety Check currently supports 110,000+ active users across 2,000+ organizations.

Get started with real-time crisis management

Install Safety Check from the Microsoft Teams app marketplace and instantly upgrade your crisis readiness.
•    Get a 45-day trial of the premium version – no credit card required.
•    One person installs the bot for the entire team. No individual installs are needed.
•    Get real-time safety status updates of your employees during a crisis.
•    Safety Check works within Microsoft Teams – no additional software or logins required.

Make your workforce crisis-ready before the next emergency strikes.