Imagine a manufacturing plant on a chilly morning when the fire alarm suddenly sounds. As younger employees move confidently toward exits, an older technician with knee issues hesitates at the top of the stairwell, uncertain whether they can descend safely without assistance. The reality is this situation is becoming more common as employees over the age of 55 now account for nearly a quarter of the workforce. With the workforce demographics changing drastically over the past decade, it’s imperative for EHS managers and safety teams to rethink evacuation planning. Failure to adequately identify and prepare for employees with limited mobility or different abilities can lead to delayed evacuations, increased liability, and most critically, preventable injuries or fatalities.
Identifying the Gap in Recognizing Disabled Employees
Your evacuation plan is only as good as your understanding of your employees’ abilities. Corporations estimate that 4-7% of their workforce are people with disabilities. When disabilities are disclosed, companies, of course, provide day-to-day accommodation and support for employees. But what about unreported disabilities? A recent global survey of employees found that 25% of respondents reported having a disability or health condition that limits their daily activities, yet only 21% of people report their disability to their employers. And with growing concerns around the aging workforce potentially being discriminated against, the population may be even less forthcoming in highlighting the support that they need.
Does your evacuation plan account for a way to safety and quickly support nearly a fourth of your population in a single flow evacuation, meaning that no one needs to re-enter the building once they have successfully made it to safety? At Ethos Preparedness, we often see evidence from our EHS assessments that physical assessments, voluntary disclosure forms, or HR databases often fail to capture the full spectrum of employees’ capabilities, leaving safety managers unaware of hidden evacuation risks until it’s too late. Without a systematic approach — combining regular self-reporting opportunities, confidential check-ins, and HR collaboration — EHS teams risk underestimating the number of individuals who might need assistance during an emergency evacuation.
Ensuring Emergency Plans Address Disabilities
Creating a plan that accurately accounts for disabled employees requires more than just understanding that the need exists. Your building’s physical infrastructure, evacuation routes, and available equipment all must be evaluated, conveniently located, and trained on to ensure that employees can quickly activate during an emergency. EHS professionals can utilize the following key strategies to address the hidden disability gap with their emergency evacuation plan.
1. Engaging with Employees Annually
Regular and inclusive reviews of your emergency evacuation plan are essential. While it is important to engage with all employees to review and enact evacuation plans each year, holding an open session for employees that may have special considerations during an evacuation can not only help identify unknown needs, but also give those employees additional time to determine any accommodations needed. These sessions should provide a forum for employees to voice their concerns and suggest modifications to existing procedures.
2. Regular Training and Drills
Targeted training programs and regular evacuation drills can help identify different considerations that different areas of the business may benefit from. Drills should simulate real-world scenarios and include participation from all individuals in the company to test the efficacy of your tailored plans.
When it comes to supporting non-ambulatory or mobility impaired employees, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that up to 40% of workplace emergency plans lack specific protocols for this population — a gap that can translate into catastrophic delays when an evacuation is needed. To mitigate this gap, we can consider:
- Implementing a buddy system, pairing able bodied employees with those that will need more assistance.
- Grouping employees based on location, potential mobility constraints, and proximity to evacuation stairwells. From there, model evacuation roles and routes to minimize confusion.
These approaches not only align with ADA guidance, which underscores the need for identifying primary evacuation routes and secondary routes that accommodate wheelchairs, walkers, and other assistive devices, but give employees confidence in how to safely evacuate everyone during an emergency.
It’s also important that your evacuation plans consider the ways that your organization works including vacation time and remote or hybrid employees. Your evacuation plan must be agile enough to account for varying occupancy levels, shifting evacuation roles, and navigate any impact to the buddy system that you have implemented.
Your Evacuation Approach
The best evacuation approach is the single-flow evacuation, meaning that everyone exits the building together and no one needs to go back into reuse evacuation equipment or support other colleagues in getting out. To achieve a single-flow evacuation, there must be enough safety equipment and trained personnel to evacuate all who need assistance in a single operation. In many evacuation scenarios, building re-entry would not be safe for your staff. Your annual drills are both an opportunity to test your staff’s ability to execute the evacuation plan and to informally assess their sheer ability to navigate a stairwell quickly and safely.
Now you might be thinking, by the time some people have exited the building, first responders should be on scene and would then be able to go in and support others that need help evacuating. While that could potentially be true, that is a critical aspect of your plan that you have no control over and would significantly increase the liability and risk to your people. Instead, having enough evacuation equipment, like the Med Sled®, that can easily be stored and used to evacuate people can minimize the risk of having to leave someone behind and keep all of your people safe.
In practice, EHS teams conduct a facility-wide evacuation readiness assessment to determine the optimal locations to deploy equipment. Evacuation equipment, like Med Sleds, should be strategically placed throughout the work areas, ensuring that they are easily accessible. It’s also important that all evacuation equipment is not cached in a single location in case that location becomes inaccessible during an emergency. Employees must be trained to quickly deploy the sled, load and secure occupants safely and drag or lower them down a stairwell safely. Unlike traditional evacuation chairs or improvised stretchers, Med Sleds enable two employees — regardless of their physical strength — to safely evacuate a person 2-3 times their own body weight. Crucially, Med Sleds are compatible with a “no re-entry” philosophy: once a sled and its operator exit a hazardous zone, neither needs to return, minimizing risk for first responders and preventing bottlenecks that can occur when rescuers must leave equipment to help additional evacuees.
After-Action Reviews
While it is a common practice to conduct after action reviews following a drill, seeking feedback from beyond the drill facilitators may elicit more comprehensive feedback. Holding an open session for employees or sending a post-drill survey can reveal unknown needs. One common challenge in successfully preparing your workforce for an evacuation is underinvesting in training. While evacuation plans and roles may be learned easily, ongoing skill decay means your team may forget proper deployment techniques if they don’t practice at least semi-annually.
To bridge these gaps, EHS professionals should consider a structured, five-step roadmap:
- Evacuation Needs Assessment: Conduct annual audits to inventory employees with mobility limitations, using confidential surveys and HR data, then overlay this information on facility floor plans to identify high-priority evacuation zones.
- Equipment Placement and Redundancy: Based on single-flow readiness guidelines, cache evacuation equipment, like Med Sleds near key stairwells (ideally within 100 feet of any occupied workstation) and ensure redundancy by placing at least one unit per floor or wing. Use storage cases or steel cabinets to protect this equipment from damage while maintaining rapid access.
- Training and Competency Verification: Integrate the use of your evacuation equipment into annual safety drills, emphasizing both proper use and ergonomic techniques. Maintain a roster of super users, employees who receive advance training and can mention others during an emergency, on each shift.
- Cross-Functional Drills and Communication: Facilitate joint exercises that involve EHS, Facilities, HR, Security, and if possible, local first responders. Simulate scenarios such as fire alarms, power outage, or chemical release, ensuring your team can coordinate handoff of any safety equipment to first responders outside the building.
- Continuous Improvement and Feedback Loops: After each drill or real-world activation, gather feedback from participants — especially differently abled employees — and refine evacuation maps, equipment locations, and communication protocols accordingly.
By embedding these steps into a continuous improvement cycle, organizations can transform evacuation planning from a static compliance exercise into a dynamic, people-centric process that accounts for evolving workforce demographics.
As the U.S. workforce continues to age and diversify, EHS professionals must anticipate and mitigate evacuation risks that go beyond traditional “one-size-fits-all” strategies. Organizations that fail to identify differently abled employees, neglect specialized evacuation equipment like Med Sleds, or overlook the complexities of single-flow evacuation are leaving vulnerable populations at risk and exposing themselves to potential legal and reputational fallout. By adopting a data-driven, inclusive approach — anchored in the latest demographic and disability statistics — safety managers can ensure every employee, regardless of mobility or medical condition, has a clear, reliable path to safety.