Oshkosh Corporation Strengthens Travel Safety With AlertMedia’s Unified Platform

Safeguarding Team Members Across Every Continent

Founded in 1917 and headquartered in Wisconsin, Oshkosh Corporation is a global industrial technology company. It produces specialty vehicles and equipment designed to advance various industries—from defense and firefighting to construction and waste management. Oshkosh’s mission is to protect and empower the everyday heroes—soldiers, firefighters, and postal carriers—who perform some of the most challenging jobs on the planet.

To design, manufacture, distribute, and service the company’s heavy-duty vehicles and equipment, Oshkosh employees work and travel across 19 countries and 125 locations. “We have 10,000-plus travelers every year and people and products on every continent—including Antarctica,” says Brandon Spurlock, Head of Security at Oshkosh. “There is no limit to where our team members may be working, which presents unique safety and security challenges.”

With AlertMedia, Oshkosh has a seamlessly integrated travel risk management, threat intelligence, and emergency communication solution—in one intuitive platform. AlertMedia gives Oshkosh threat intelligence and the ability to swiftly act on that intelligence to keep its employees safe, whether in the office or on business trips.

Elevating Safety While the Company Grows

As the Oshkosh team member count grows, Spurlock knows keeping a dispersed workforce safe will become more challenging. The company needed a purpose-built solution to keep its worldwide team members informed and connected.

While Oshkosh had used a standalone emergency communication tool for many years, the platform couldn’t provide localized threat intelligence or scale to meet the company’s evolving needs. “As our security team grew and we gained more experience with different platforms, we saw there were opportunities for improvements,” says Spurlock.

The main improvement Spurlock and his team had in mind was finding a unified solution that would allow them to detect, assess, and respond to risks from one streamlined interface. “I didn’t want to have to log into three different systems and go back and forth between them,” he says. “That’s time you don’t have during an emergency.”

Specifically, Oshkosh’s security team needed a solution that could unify travel safety, risk management, and emergency communication. “The ability to open a single platform to identify, monitor, and communicate about potential threats is essential,” says Spurlock. “A unified solution is the key to streamlining critical safety and security workflows.”

Another challenge Oshkosh faced was how to send relevant, targeted notifications quickly. “How do we communicate with our team members at a moment’s notice? How do we get them the alerts they need? Can we send those alerts to large groups, specific facilities, or even our entire corporation if required?” says Spurlock. “Having a solution flexible enough that we could easily segment and communicate with different groups of employees was an important consideration given the diverse needs of our workforce.”

Real-Time Threat Monitoring and Emergency Communication Worldwide

After researching a range of providers, Spurlock selected AlertMedia for its integrated, easy-to-use solution—and the company’s shared values. “When we were looking at potential providers, one of the things that stood out was AlertMedia’s focus on keeping people safe,” adds Spurlock. “That’s one of the key things we strive for in our organization—to ensure our people are safe. Finding a provider with the same mission was a priority for us.”

Spurlock was also impressed by AlertMedia’s willingness to go above and beyond to create a solution that met his needs. “I threw a couple of hardballs at the AlertMedia team and made some out-of-the-ordinary requests to customize the solution, and they took on the challenge,” he says. “Their communication and the way they tackled those requests showed me they are committed to continuous innovation and exceeding customer expectations.”

By providing threat intelligence, travel risk management, and emergency communication in one place, AlertMedia helps keep Oshkosh employees informed, no matter their location. The platform ticks all the boxes for Spurlock and his security team and other departments—including the HR and safety teams—that have begun using it to notify employees of critical updates.

Since AlertMedia integrates directly with the company’s HR system, new employees are automatically added to receive notifications. “The ability to automatically sync AlertMedia with the contact data in our HR system is crucial since we have a large, dynamic workforce,” says Spurlock. “Employee contact information is up to date, and we don’t have to spend time manually adding or removing employees from the system.”

Spurlock has also built notification templates within AlertMedia to cover various emergency scenarios, safety drills, and business travel events. “Pre-scripted templates ensure that in an emergency, we can quickly send a clear, concise message to impacted employees,” explains Spurlock.

Using AlertMedia’s travel risk management capabilities, Oshkosh’s security team can now receive analyst-vetted threat intelligence impacting travelers, view employees’ proximity to those threats, and communicate with those employees quickly.

For travel of any kind, Spurlock and his team send travel briefings containing local insights curated by AlertMedia’s travel security analysts. “We can open that country brief, pull up the tab showing which team members are traveling there, and instantly share the brief with them,” says Spurlock. “With over 10,000 travelers a year moving throughout the world, AlertMedia’s Travel Briefs are essential to preparing our employees for safe travel.”

Giving Employees the Confidence of Knowing They’re Protected

The value of AlertMedia was immediately apparent to Spurlock, even before Oshkosh had officially moved from its previous platform. “During the testing phase, I was using the mobile app and had my location tracking turned on,” he says. “I was at a company dinner and received an alert. It was amazing that we weren’t even partnered with AlertMedia yet but were already receiving that vital information.” AlertMedia’s multichannel notifications and full-featured mobile app now help to ensure employees are aware of developing situations that may impact them—no matter where they are.

Before departing for international travel, employees enable location tracking on the AlertMedia mobile app so Oshkosh’s security team can monitor their locations and keep them informed. “AlertMedia gives our team members an extra layer of confidence during travel,” says Spurlock. “We also attend many trade shows, and using AlertMedia, we’re able to send out a pre-show travel brief to inform employees about the area.”

AlertMedia has helped Oshkosh dramatically accelerate the speed of intelligence gathering and dissemination—a vital factor in improving safety and security outcomes. Within AlertMedia, Spurlock’s team can group employees by facility, location, or team. They can then send messages to specific segments or everyone. “With AlertMedia, we can send notifications much faster and more reliably than we could when trying to enter 20 people’s contact details and manually send a message.”

This feature comes into its own during severe weather conditions. “When winter or other weather situations make it unsafe for our team members to come to work, we use AlertMedia to notify those impacted of facility delays or closures.”

AlertMedia has also become a valuable tool for Oshkosh headquarters. “Our global headquarters has multiple floors with a safety warden for each,” says Spurlock. “During fire and evacuation drills, the security team can send a message through AlertMedia to each warden to find out where they are, when the floor is cleared, and when they have checked into the rally point. This helps us track how fast we’re getting people out of the building and find ways to continually improve.”

“Whether in a drill or real emergency, AlertMedia helps us streamline operations and maintain accountability,” adds Spurlock. “It has also strengthened our safety culture, amping up interest in and engagement with how we communicate with employees during critical events.”

Safety Is an Uncompromised Value

With AlertMedia’s all-in-one emergency communication, threat intelligence, and travel risk management solution, Oshkosh employees have the knowledge they need to stay safe—whether in the office, traveling, or in the field.

“At Oshkosh, safety is an uncompromisable value,” says Spurlock. “We strive to instill this belief into all of our team members so everyone knows how important it is that we work safely, act safely, and ensure our people go home safely every day,” says Spurlock. “AlertMedia helps us achieve that.”