How to Do an Emergency Roll Call
An emergency roll call is a safety procedure, not just a list of names. It should tell the incident lead who was expected on site, who reached the assembly area, and who may still need help—without sending people back into danger.
1. Prepare before an emergency
Write the procedure down and assign responsibility. Identify who can direct the evacuation, who coordinates each assembly area, who communicates with emergency responders, and who keeps the roster. Define primary and alternate exit routes and assembly points, including accessible options.
OSHA 29 CFR 1910.38 requires applicable emergency action plans to include procedures for accounting for employees after evacuation. Read the standard and adapt the plan with your safety professionals; PingIn is not a substitute for the plan or a guarantee of compliance.
2. Know who is currently on site
Use a roster that can be updated during the workday. Record employees, visitors, contractors, temporary workers, and anyone else who may be on the premises. If your site has multiple buildings or shifts, say which roster applies to each assembly area.
PingIn Enterprise can start an employee Emergency Roll Call from the current presence calculation. The event snapshots everyone PingIn believed was present at that moment; later normal attendance activity does not change that roster. Organizations should still maintain a fallback roster and procedure.
3. Direct people to assembly points
During an evacuation, people should follow the site's routes and go to the assigned assembly point. Keep assembly areas clear of fire lanes and responder access. Account for people by group, floor, department, or other assignment that makes sense for your site.
Visitors and contractors need a clear owner. Use sign-in information, host details, visitor badges, and contractor records where available. Do not assume an employee roster includes non-employees.
4. Conduct the roll call
- Have authorized Enterprise staff start Emergency Roll Call after the emergency or drill begins.
- Use the fixed employee snapshot as the PingIn roster for that event.
- Confirm employees by existing identifier scan or manual confirmation and record each result once.
- Review the visible list of people who remain unaccounted for with the incident lead or responders.
- Use the site's emergency plan for assistance, last-known information, visitors, contractors, and all safety decisions.
Do not treat silence as proof that someone is safe. Do not send employees back inside to look for someone. Searching a building is for trained emergency responders or personnel assigned to that role under the emergency plan.
5. Keep a fallback if systems are unavailable
Power, network access, devices, or scanners may fail. Keep printed rosters, a pen, a charged backup device or radio plan, and a defined owner for updating the paper record. Decide in advance how the team will reconcile the paper notes with the normal system after the incident.
Practice the fallback during drills. A digital tool should shorten a known process—not become the only way people know what to do.
6. Drill, review, and improve
Run drills appropriate to the site and record what happened: how long evacuation took, whether people knew their assembly point, whether visitors and contractors appeared on the roster, and where the roll call stalled. Review the results with the safety team and update routes, assignments, training, and contact information when the workplace changes.
Where PingIn may help
PingIn Enterprise provides a browser-based employee Emergency Roll Call: authorized staff start an Emergency or Drill event, PingIn snapshots employees believed present, and operators account for employees by identifier scan or manual confirmation. The active screen emphasizes people who remain unaccounted for, and completed events remain in history.
It is not visitor or contractor mustering, emergency detection, mass notification, an incident-command system, or a replacement for an Emergency Action Plan. Multiple authenticated administrative devices may participate in one event, while offline synchronization and multiple muster points remain out of scope.
For deployment questions, contact PingIn and describe your roster, hardware, and emergency-accountability requirement.