Selecting & Optimizing Your Anonymous Reporting System
Seven steps to help schools and workplaces select, implement, and get the most out of their Anonymous Reporting System.
Introduction
Anonymous Reporting Systems (ARS) are powerful tools that keep schools and workplaces safe.
ARS have recently emerged as a way for schools and work places to easily and confidentially report issues and concerns before they evolve into more serious situations. While ARS are impactful, the technology is only as good as the support and tools users receive. It’s important that your team and those you keep safe are thoroughly prepared to implement your ARS and that you get the most out of your system. In this guide, you’ll find an ARS overview plus seven easy steps to ensuring your ARS meets the support, training, customization, and resource needs of your school or workplace:
- 1. Automate Your Onboarding & Training Process
- 2. Get to Know Your Account Manager
- 3. Take the Burden Off Your Administrators
- 4. Pull in Crisis Center Resources & Out-of-Hours Support
- 5. Benefit From Team Communications
- 6. Sustain Programs With The Right Resources
- 7. Understand Your Data
What is ARS?
Before learning about the steps to optimize your system, it’s important to know the details of ARS. An ARS is a type of technology that allows users to anonymously report concerns to school and workplace officials via app, website, or phone call.
Here's how an industry-leading ARS works:
When students or employees want to help others:
- Students and employees submit a confidential tip via app, site or call
- The tip is reviewed by a suicide and crisis-accredited incident response specialist
- If tip is life-threatening: The specialist can escalate the tip with an internal escalation team or with local police when needed for emergencies or imminent threats
- Assigned school and workplace teams can converse with tip submitter for more information and get help for the individual as needed
- Over time, the teams draw on submission data and reporting for better insights to proactively protect their school or business
When students or employees want to help themselves:
- Students and workers can reach out anonymously to trained, accredited suicide and crisis counselors from their phone
- The trained counselor helps to move the individual to an emotional safe space and provides post-discussion resources
High level features may include:
- Alert system for school and work officials
- App & web incident management system
- Warning signs and signals training for students and employees
- A 24/7/365 incident response center with accredited incident response specialists
- Team communications for better, faster response to tips and incidents
These types of ARS offer school and workplace officials a way to easily educate users, and gather, manage, inform and document submissions and courses of action in an all-in-one tool.
So, How Do You Optimize Your ARS?
With limited resources and time, it’s critical that your team is getting the most out of your ARS technology solution; it’s also essential that everyone is on board when it comes to training and sustainable use. Here are seven easy steps to ensure you optimize your ARS with a focus on the unique support, training, customization, and resource needs of your school or workplace.
Step 1 | Automate Your Onboarding and Training Process
Training and onboarding are the first key steps in ensuring you have buy-in and long-term engagement from students and employees alike. One way to ensure training fits your needs and your onboarding is seamless? Automation.
With an automated onboarding and training process, your school or workplace could have its anonymous reporting system (ARS) up and running in as little as 3 days.
Here's how you can streamline the process without decreasing the emphasis on safety:
- Deploy a fully automated, hybrid ARS training and onboarding process
- Document the steps in the training program from tip submission to incident action plans
- Test users on how to use the system.
- Do students and staff understand each step?
Benefit from:
- Eliminated schedule hassles
- Standardized training and quick onboarding for students and new employees
- Ensure understanding and compliance
Wondering if automated training would replace human assistance with your ARS? Luckily, the best ARS support combines flexible, automated onboarding with 24/7 live assistance and lifetime account managers. Learn more about maximizing expert support in the next step.
Step 2 | Get to Know Your Account Manager Process
Expert support for your ARS is key to its success not to mention a customized approach to your environment. The best ARS providers partner you with a lifetime account manager who can customize your solution to your needs and who manage every step of your program. It’s key to rely on this trained resource, especially when your unique circumstances require special support.
Get in touch with your account manager and ask for assistance with:
- Setup
- Onboarding
- System Launch
- Post-Launch Awareness Campaigns for Students and Staff
- Data Reporting
- Annual Refresh and Best Practice Training
Benefit from:
- Long-term support for your school or workplace
- Deep knowledge of your context
- Specialist support for unique issues
- Assistance with sustainability efforts for long-term safety
With a dedicated account manager in your toolkit, you have support to drive initiatives well beyond launch, and a key resource for any issues or custom requests that arise.
Step 3 | Take the Burden Off Your Administrators
One critical factor for ARS success is having the right internal team for the job. It’s important to recruit individuals who recognize the importance of safety. Yet, maintaining an ARS and being on an ARS team can be difficult. A stand-out ARS shouldn’t just support students and employees; it should also support the team leading and implementing the program as if it’s an extension of the team itself.
Here's how you can optimize your team's capacity with support features in your ARS.
Equip your internal team with:
- Easy onboarding, training, and ongoing support for your safety team
- Out-of-hours support from an expert team that assumes team responsibilities so the team is not “on duty” 24/7/365
- An in-house incident response center with accredited experts trained in crisis and suicide management
Benefit from:
- Elimination of the feeling your team needs to be “always on”
- Expert insights into critical and stressful situations
- Action plan support
See the next step for how to tap into built-in expert support so your people can have peace of mind after hours and beyond.
Step 4 | Pull in Crisis Center Resources and Out-of-Hours Support
Here’s a fact: not all ARS are created equal.
Two of the stand-out features of an industry-leading ARS are:
- an incident response center to receive and act on tips, and
- a crisis text line for people to talk to trained crisis counselors.
The best ARS programs help not only students and employees, but also teams providing day-to-day help. An incident response center can monitor issues and save the team precious time especially if the situation is life-threatening. A crisis text line can take similar burdens off the team with expert support for those in need.
Here's how to optimize your ARS program with these features:
- Use ARS training to onboard students and employees to a 24/7/365 integrated crisis text line for free mental health support and crisis intervention
- Tap into out-of-hours incident management to relieve your safety team each night, weekend, holiday and vacation
Step 5 | Benefit From Team Communications and 2-way Chat with the Tipster
In an emergency, you need the entire team to be informed so they can respond quickly. Team communication is another area able to be streamlined with the right ARS functionality. The best ARS allow teams to talk to one another within the system and with the tip submitter themselves if need be.
This saves valuable time when a life is at stake.
By driving team communications within your ARS, you can:
- Ensure internal discussion is more efficient and documented
- Keep dialogue open with tip submitter in order to best help an individual
Benefit from:
- Efficient, transparent dialogue that eliminates barriers to communication
Step 6 | Sustain Programs with the Right Resources
Launching an ARS is one thing – sustaining its use is another. It’s important to drive awareness and engagement at regular intervals to make sure students and employees are using the ARS as optimally as possible. This ensures your safety net is strong and reinforces its use over time.
You can:
- Draw on your account manager to support sustainability efforts
- Use resources from your ARS provider to drive engagement.
Free benefits should include:
- Webinars
- Trainings
- Refreshes
Benefit from:
- All-in-one support from your provider without needing to look elsewhere for additional trainings
- Maintained levels of engagement with your system and your safety program.
Step 7 | Understand Your Data
One of the last ways to get the most out of your ARS is to examine your own data. The best ARS solutions enable turnkey reporting. The system lets you quickly gain insight into your environment without needing to use precious time to get answers. You can quickly and easily run reports to identify trends, concerns, and successes.
With better – and secure – data and reporting, you get:
- Data that you can analyze from every angle
- Different views and insights into your unique trends
- Informed decision making
The Key? Better Support at Every Step
Partners like Lightspeed StopIt™ believe that better support and safety are holistic. You can rely on a partner like us to support your comprehensive safety solutions from onboarding to reporting.
Want to see our best-in-class and industry leading Anonymous Reporting System in Action?
