Alston & Bird

When a company is on the Fortune Magazine “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for 22 straight years, it’s obvious that they take the health and welfare of their lawyers and staff very seriously. Not surprisingly, when law firm Alston & Bird decided to update their emergency preparedness strategy after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, everyone on the executive team joined the effort.

Leading law firm Alston & Bird, LLP, knows the value of their team; they also know the value of their time. Creating an information, training, and communication system that would prepare employees for emergencies was high on their task list after 9/11, but the complexity of becoming experts outside of their core competency proved too inefficient. They turned to Mitratech Business Continuity Planning because all the tools they needed were included, especially a complete team of industry experts at their fingertips.

The Challenge: An Endless List of Threats to Business & No Way to Mitigate the Impact

The Alston & Bird team are experts in law, not emergency preparedness. As they researched the many crisis situations that could possibly impact their nine offices nationally, it quickly became clear that they needed to implement a solution that would protect employees and their families. They also wanted a solution that could protect against different threats in different cities, earthquake preparedness in LA, and dirty bombs or anthrax in DC, for example.

“It was overwhelming,” said Cathy Benton, chief human resources officer, who oversaw the employee components of the preparedness process. “The number of possible threats and appropriate responses seemed endless, and the need to train across all of our offices throughout the United States further complicated the matter. The team was inundated.”

According to Ms. Benton, one of the company’s stated core values is a focus on employees. “When you’re planning for all the ‘what ifs’, it’s one thing to establish redundant sites for technology purposes and make sure there are alternate financial solutions. But more important—and more complicated—are the employees’ questions, ‘what about me?’ and ‘what about my family?’ There are so many external factors that impact emergency situations,” she continued. “Just think about the possibility of employee violence. With the economy so bad, more people are being forced into early retirement, and some are even losing their homes. You add all these stressors, and there’s a heightened potential for an incident.”

The Solution: Trusting the Professionals with Preparedness

Alston & Bird chose Mitratech Business Continuity Planning for their workforce-centric emergency preparedness program. “Why are we trying to reinvent the wheel?” asked Terry Stevens, Director of Benefits and Compensation. “Mitratech already has the wheel. They know ‘in this situation, here’s what to do and not do.’ Why should we spend so much time trying to stay on top of issues that are not our core competency?”

Mitratech offered a plethora of solutions, including:

• Analysis and training to prepare each office to address the unique concerns of their region
• An in-depth knowledge base with tabletop exercise templates, training videos with certifications, checklists, and threat descriptions
• A SaaS platform, which is a hosted solution, requires no software updates and provides easy access to consistent information from anywhere

The Alston & Bird team instantly understood the value.

Before Mitratech, they would see a crisis looming and had to do extensive research to determine appropriate preparation and responses. “Now, when we see something on the horizon, like H1N1, for example, we don’t have to start from scratch,” continued Ms. Stevens. “We have someone to call, or we can just go to our portal and quickly pull up information and responses in a moment’s notice.”

Alston & Bird has begun training crisis team members and plans to complete company-wide training. They have, however, already learned to rely on Mitratech training and access to expert data. “When you’re not an expert, you might think in certain emergencies that you should run to the top of a building for safety, but you should really be in the basement. It’s not instinctive. You have to have access to the exact information on how to react and recover.”