Risk Mitigation Must Be Planned for When it Comes to Events

Planning an event is hard, they are meant to be fun, educational, festive, and so many other things. What we don’t think about, is that planning an event is not just about all the detail of who will speak, how many chairs you need, it is also about how to keep your attendees as safe as possible if and when things come up. This week's guest shines a light on what an event hall is responsible for and what the host is responsible for. Tune in, because I was shocked!  

 

Leighann Lovely  00:20

HR professionals, business owners and operations at all levels are struggling to figure out what needs to change. Our system has been shocked practices have been questioned, and conversations are finally happening. We all know there has been a huge shift in what people want. inclusion and diversity are common phrases. But often misunderstood generations are coming together more than ever on what's important. Mental health has been brought to the forefront of everyone's mind. Let's humanize these conversations. Let's talk about what's important for employees to be successful in life and at their job and how companies can create an environment to allow them to do both, because successful people will make up a successful workforce. I'm Leighann Lovely, let's get this conversation started.  I have Sarah Davis joining us today. She is the CEO of event safety plus, where they focus in mitigating safety concerns before they happen at events and ensuring a proper response should they occur. They work with people to organize events, large and small, determine risk factors and create easy to execute safety plans. This is going to be an awesome opportunity to learn about how to make sure that the events that we all put on are safe and have the great plans that need to be put in place are in place. So I'm excited to jump into this conversation with her today. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today.

 

Sarah Davis  02:01

It is wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.

 

Leighann Lovely  02:03

So you, you have such an amazing, interesting business. So I'm excited to talk with you. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?

 

Sarah Davis  02:16

Sure. So I am the CEO of event safety plus, and we work with event planners, anyone planning an event to mitigate safety concerns before they happen. And create safety plans for those events are goals that everyone should be able to attend things safely. But me personally, I live outside of Chicago, I lived here since before COVID. So I haven't really explored much, which is funny. But we'll we'll do that eventually right born and raised in Michigan. And we started this company about a year ago now because we were at an event where an active shooter happened, it was a parade and with our background, my partner and I our background in emergency services and emergency management, we saw some things that with a little bit of extra planning could have been way different and less impactful on the community. And we we knew that we could make a difference. And we knew we can make a change with those things. So we started the company.

 

Leighann Lovely  03:24

So and first. Wow. I mean for being at an event. That's such a scary, I mean, even even being blocks away and hearing that you're hearing gunshots or hearing any type of it's just such an amazing ly amazingly terrifying. situation I've been, and I was in my home when this happened, but when gunshots ring out and you just immediately you know that that fear factor because you have no idea where it's coming from where it's pointed. So, I mean, first of all, that's it's amazing that that idea, you know, at that point came up for you. And to that you've you've taken on, you know, a position, an opportunity to say, hey, let's create something that can actually help mitigate, you know, risk in situations like this. And I'm assuming that this is not or that there is not a whole ton of companies out there that do what you do.

 

Sarah Davis  04:38

No, no, there are a few companies that give you some tools to kind of do it yourself and make a plan and offer you know, some 30 minutes courses, things like that. But But the bigger thing is that people that plan events are creative. They're planners, they want to you know make the event beautiful Well, they want everybody to have fun, right? And a lot of event planners or people that plan events, because that everybody that plans that event has that title. They're not trained in what risk factors and what safety factors can happen at their event. And we're talking just little things. I'm not even talking big things like an active shooter or a tornado, we're talking, what would happen if somebody had a heart attack at your event? Does somebody know how to use the AED machine? Or do CPR? Or are you yelling for somebody who knows CPR in the crowd, it woul