Mass Notification System for Small Business

As a company, it’s important to be able to communicate with your employees. Letting your staff know about upcoming meetings, schedule changes, benefit sign-up periods, and emergencies are all necessary. For some businesses, sending these kinds of employee alerts via email is a common choice. However, this doesn’t work well in industries with many non-desk employees — like construction, manufacturing, and warehousing, to name a few.

When many of your staff don’t regularly check emails (and may not even have a company email address) you need a different type of employee notification system. For small businesses especially, finding a solution that allows you to meet the needs of your employees while also catering to the size of your company can be a real challenge. Notification systems designed to work for businesses with hundreds or thousands of employees may not give you the features you actually need at the right price point.

Let’s explore the options for mass notification systems that truly cater to small businesses. In this blog we’ll look at what these notification systems are and why they’re needed, what types of alerts they can send, and how they can be set up for the scale needed by small businesses.

What Is the Purpose of a Mass Notification System?

A mass notification system is a means of communicating necessary information with a number of different people, wherever they are. Sending mass notifications allows a small business to alert their employees about emergencies, or to convey less critical information, in real time.

For a small business with employees who can’t or don’t regularly check emails, the purpose of a mass notification system is to make sure everyone gets important information in an accessible and timely manner. SMS text messaging is often the ideal channel for these notifications for two main reasons. SMS is able to be received even without an internet connection, which is important for staff who may be working where there isn’t internet available. The other big benefit of text messaging for notifications is that they don’t require a smartphone, which some non-desk workers may not have or care to use.

Are Mass Notification Systems Required?

Providing a mass notification system for your small business employees is not required legally. However, in many cases the practicalities of needing to communicate with your staff means it is required to run your business effectively.

For example, let’s say you run a construction company and inclement weather means you need to adjust your schedule for the day. If you don’t have a mass text alert system to let your crew know, they may show up at the wrong job site. Or, you would need to call or text each person individually. Both of these mean time wasted calling or waiting for workers to get to the right location. As a small business owner, time is one of the most precious resources you have, so there needs to be a better system in place.

What Are the Types of Alerts?

There are two main types of alerts that might be sent with a mass notification system.

Emergency alerts are about events that need an immediate response. These could include things like:

• Severe weather warnings, like a tornado, hurricane, or flood
• Immediate physical dangers, like a mass notification system fire alarm or carbon monoxide warning

Non-emergency alerts are about important items, but they don’t need immediate attention or pose an imminent physical danger. These could be things like:

• Work schedule changes
• Company events
• Benefit enrollment reminders

How Do I Set Up Text Notifications for My Business?

Small businesses need the right notification system to meet their specific needs. Not all ways of communicating with your employees are the right fit for your business, and that’s why we created Yourco. We give you a two-way communication system with your non-desk employees that also works great as a mass notification system, using SMS texting.

SMS text messages are an ideal way to reach staff members who are in the field or on the production floor. Many of your non-desk employees won’t necessarily be somewhere with a good internet connection, or want to download a work app onto their personal phones.

But just sending a standard group text message to your entire staff can be a problem too. Sending one large group text can cause employees to ignore or turn off notifications with the long string of replies. It can also raise privacy issues when you are sharing personal phone numbers with everyone. And, sending an individual text to each person is cumbersome and time consuming.

Yourco allows managers to send a mass text from a computer or mobile app that shows up as an individual text to employees. Workers can respond without it being sent to everyone, and Yourco keeps an easy-to-access log of all communications. Send alerts to your entire staff, or any smaller group you select the quick and easy way.

Contact us or try for free today to learn how we can simplify the mass notification system for your small business!