Track Coverage of Positions

After you’ve defined roles and put them into a structure, you’ll want a tool for making sure you know which positions will be covered when and by whom and – perhaps more importantly – where the gaps are.

In the first weeks of an emergency you may have several different people rotate into and out of the same job.  For example, a Water and Sanitation expert from the Emergency Response Team may come for the first few weeks and then have to leave.  You may have a Regular staff person lined up to take over that position in the long-term, but not be able to get her in place for a few more weeks. So you’ll need someone to fill in temporarily.

Multiply that situation by all the positions on the growing team and you can see that such a tool might come in handy.

We’ve attached a file with a few different versions of a tool we have found helpful in tracking coverage of positions. The Excel file, Position Coverage Table Templates and Examples, has several different sheets with different templates and examples of how they have been used in the past.

Tip:

  • If your response is not large – that is, if you don’t have a lot of people coming into, out of, and moving around the area –  you may be able to use the Position Coverage Tool to keep track of staff locations and movements as well.  Keeping close track of location information is a critical administrative and security function.   Follow this link – Staff Location Tracking – for more on this topic.