Running the centre
Escalation matrix
An escalation matrix is the table that says, for each type of report and each level of urgency, who gets it first, how long they have to pick it up and who it goes up to if they do not. It turns "let someone know" into a rule that holds the same at ten in the morning as at three at night.
Also known asescalation · escalation path · escalation chart · escalation procedure
How it is put together
It has two axes. One is urgency, which in incident management usually comes from crossing the impact (how many people it affects, what risk there is) with how pressing it is. The other is the level: who picks it up first, who next and who decides if the first two do not respond. In a residence the levels are usually the role that handles the matter, its manager and the residence's management. The deadline in each box comes from the SLA, and the names from the org chart and the shift.
| Urgency | First alert | If nobody picks it up |
|---|---|---|
| High (water that will not stop, someone locked out in the middle of the night) | The whole role at once | Whoever is on call, and management |
| Medium (no hot water, a lock that sticks) | The person on shift in that role | Their manager, once the deadline passes |
| Low (a light bulb, a blind) | The morning summary | The weekly review of overdue items |
An illustrative example: each residence sets its own deadlines and levels.
Worth knowing
What people take for granted: that escalating means forwarding. If the second level gets the alert without what has already been tried, it starts from scratch. And a matrix that sends everything up to management stops being a matrix: it is just one more inbox. How Bedel does it: escalation to people.
Sources
Related terms
- SLAAn SLA (service level agreement) is a written commitment to the time and quality with which a service is delivered. In a student residence it usually sets how many hours a maintenance ticket has to be picked up or resolved by type, and it is what decides what counts as overdue.
- Org chart and shiftA residence's org chart is the map of roles (management, reception, maintenance, kitchen, housekeeping) and of who holds each one; the shift says who is on duty in each time slot. Together they answer the question that matters when a message comes in: whose job is it right now.
- On-call dutyOn-call duty is the period when a member of staff, not necessarily in the building, must be able to deal with anything urgent: answer the phone, make a decision or come in. In a student residence it usually rotates between management, maintenance or tutors, especially at night and at weekends.