Training modules/Keeping events safe/slides/conduct-a-post-incident-review

After the event: Conduct a post-incident review

Review. Once the event has concluded, it is important for the emergency response team to conduct a post-incident review.

• Were you able to handle the reported situation effectively?
• Could you have done anything better?
• Which actions or steps worked?
• What did you learn that you could share with the community in some way?
• Is there a need to follow up with any of the people involved in the incident such as the person who made the report, the person who was reported, the target of the harassment, other volunteers, participants or attendees?

Answers to these questions can help you assess your performance individually or as a team, identify possible areas for improvement, and action any outstanding items. It is up to the emergency response team how they conduct their review: it can be an in-person meeting, a phone conference, or notes in a shared document.

Document. Once your review is completed, you should produce a report that should:

• identify the issues or bottlenecks that you faced
• describe how those issues were handled (if at all)
• share lessons learned in the process
• make suggestions for improving or mitigating those issues moving forward

If the report needs to be made public, it should be anonymized. The full version should be kept to a small group, and reported as appropriate for future actions.

Disseminate. This is an opportunity to communicate issues you experienced, help create new processes where needed, help improve existing processes, and share new knowledge gained. As your report will be shared with the event organizing team, it should be anonymized to ensure confidentiality. The event organizing team should then publish the report through appropriate channels, either as part of their own event report or separately.