Rave Mobile Safety (Rave), a trusted partner for safety software protecting millions of individuals, today released key findings from a recent survey that examined employee perceptions on workplace safety. The survey revealed workplaces miss the mark in critical communication and planning, and could be unprepared to meet the future needs of employees.

On Thursday, March 1^st Rave Mobile Safety's CEO Todd Piett will be joined by industry experts Juliette Kayyem, Chief Executive Officer, Zemcar and Don Aviv, President, Interfor International for a webinar showcasing the survey results and to discuss why employees and employers aren't seeing eye to eye on workplace safety preparation. In addition, the event will provide attendees with tips for workplace safety planning efforts and will highlight what these findings mean for businesses moving forward.

"The survey gives great insight into what employees know – and don't know – about safety processes in place at their workplace and how they feel about their safety while at work overall," says Rave Mobile Safety CEO Todd Piett. "We hope the statistics shed light on where the industry needs to improve and how we can implement technology to help workers feel safer at their place of business."

Highlights from the survey of 530 respondents include:

Emergency plans need to get with the times

With strict regulations that have been enforced for some time, respondents made it clear that they were aware of their workplace's fire drill policy, as a resounding 87% said these plans are established and have been practiced at their work. However, in a world where mass shootings, cyber-attacks and other life-altering events drive the news headlines daily, only 57% of respondents indicated their workplace had preparedness drills in place for events such as hazardous materials incidents, weather alerts and active shooter incidents.

"Given the current landscape of the workforce, a company's ability to focus on an active shooter or workplace violence incident is absolutely paramount," said Juliette Kayyem, CEO of Zemcar and security industry veteran. "Moving forward, leading organizations need to ensure the safety of employees by bringing these policies into the workplace and putting them into practice, much like how fire drills are already a regular event for employees."

Millennials and Generation Z are less informed about workplace safety than Baby Boomers

As the workforce continues to evolve with a growing number of Millennials and Generation Z employees joining, the way workplace safety is communicated will also need to shift. Currently 53% of Millennial respondents were either unaware or said that their workplace did not have emergency plans in place. When compared to respondents age 45 and older, a big discrepancy is revealed as only 34% of respondents in this age group responded the same way about their employers' workplace safety plans. Additionally, nearly half of the 45 and older age group said that they were "very likely" to report an issue in which they or a co-worker's safety was in question; whereas only 8% of Millennials said they were "very likely" to report an issue like this.

The Preferred Communication Method

One area where most of respondents could agree was around how employees preferred to be notified of an emergency. Both employees based in their organizations' main offices and remote workers indicated text message was a top preference for receiving alert notifications. However, only 37% of respondents said their workplace currently has a mass text message notification system in place.

"Currently the top way of notifying employees about an incident that happens while they are in the office is through an intercom system, but when they are remote, they would prefer to be alerted by text message," Don Aviv, President, Interfor International points out from the findings. "As the number of Millennial and Generation Z employees rises, and where we work from becomes more fluid, organizations will need to move beyond a loud speaker announcement to alert employees – mobility will play a key role in this."