Chapter 3
Creating Contingent HR Policies

This chapter focuses on three areas:

• Your organization’s philosophy for the treatment of employees in general and contingencies for a disaster in specific
• Subjects for which you may want to establish contingent Human Resources policies
• Planning for emergency employee communications

Philosophy on Interim Human Resource Management

Some organizations develop an overarching Human Resources philosophy that fits their vision or mission. It goes beyond the “Employees are our most precious asset” cliché; it states how you value your workforce and how you exemplify that value through the types of Human Resources programs and policies you establish.

You need to take this philosophy into account when you start your business continuity planning. Your philosophy should be the underpinning of your plan. We also strongly recommend your plan include contingent policies for dealing with HR issues, and that these policies align with the plan and with your HR philosophy.

When developing contingent policies, the business continuity planning team, or a subteam, should discuss with senior leaders the organization’s values as they relate to the treatment of people during times of crisis. These contingent policies, which also should include how you wish to treat your customers and their demands, will serve to support the business and will be especially helpful in achieving a speedy and efficient business recovery.

Establishing contingent Human Resources policies in advance of a disaster is similar to investing in a thermostat rather than just a thermometer. With a thermostat, you’re not just measuring temperature; you’re also realizing the ability to control and change the temperature quickly. By having contingent policies already present in your business continuity plan, you are able to quickly switch to a new way of operating that suits the situation. You’ll save valuable time in addition to restoring employees’ confidence that their leaders are taking charge and considering issues that are of top priority to employees: “What about me? How is this disaster affecting my personal finances?”

Neither the planning team nor HR can afford to develop the policies in a vacuum; all must agree on how the organization wishes to care for its employees in times of duress and emotional pain. You don’t want to be second-guessed later or run the risk of inconsistent compliance, which can breed resentment among employees. Depending on the situation that ensues, you may need to alter your policies at a moment’s notice to fit the circumstances, but at least you’ll have a philosophical base from which to work.

Basic HR Policies

The basic policies to consider are those for meeting employees’ immediate needs once they and their families are safe: policies surrounding pay and benefits and the return to work.

Paychecks

How will you physically pay employees, especially if they’ve relocated and do not use direct deposit? Can you give pay statements and checks to managers at specified delivery locations announced by the control center? Or do you set up a conveniently located pickup center (or centers)? Managers or someone in the control center should take the responsibility for ensuring that employees receive their pay statements or checks in a timely fashion. So that you will be able to cut and deposit checks, be sure to develop backup and contingency plans for payroll processing, including delivery of statements and checks.

You could lose all your records in a flood, hurricane, or fire, so plan ahead. If you use an outside payroll service, plan for the ability to recapture input and uploads so that you can pay people as quickly as possible according to your schedule. If you do your own payroll processing, give serious thought to your means of data capture and backup so that all will not be lost in case your computers, disks, servers, and the like become unusable. Pay becomes even more precious to employees who face the prospect of losing it all, as we saw with the Gulf Coast hurricanes during the fall of 2005.

Employee Wages

Continuation of employee wages is one of the most significant items to plan for in advance. To what extent will you pay people if they are not able to work for a period of time? Employees whose work is exempt from overtime provisions under federal and state wage regulations are normally paid a salary irrespective of the hours worked. That’s generally fine if the power goes out for a day, but what if the power is out for three weeks or more, and there is no place for employees to report to work, conditions that many businesses experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?

What’s your philosophy on continuation of wages? How long can you afford to pay not only exempt employees, but hourly workers as well? Make these decisions now as part of your business continuity plan, so that when something serious happens, you can quickly get the word out to employees. For example, you may want to set a policy for a few days of continued pay. Once disaster strikes and you have a better feel for the length of the disruption, you can make a more informed decision and go back and tell your people what you’re doing about their pay. Don’t promise to pay them for X period of time and then renege on that; start low and go higher, not the other way around.

In your planning, you should consider alternative pay arrangements that fit your industry as well as your budget. Examples might include continuing to pay employees who are unable to report to work because the state or local government has closed the roads, or those who, due to other transportation problems, cannot physically get to work or to an alternative work location.

You might also give employees the option to use vacation time or days from their “paid time off” bank, even if the use of such time generally requires people to give advance notice.

Hazard Pay

As part of your business continuity planning, think about the extent to which you will need employees to come back to work as soon as possible to restore key products or services to the public, such as power, phones, cable, health care, or gasoline, or to meet customer needs. Will you need to provide hazard pay to acknowledge that these people may be risking their lives to enter and work in a danger zone? Will you need to increase this hazard pay during the course of the hurricane season to encourage and reward those who volunteer to work key shifts? And to what degree do overtime pay and hazard pay count toward employee benefits, such as life insurance and 401(k) contributions?

For example, Joe Bagan of the cable company Adelphia Communications said that management decided to increase its hazard pay during the 2005 hurricane season. Initially, people were willing to volunteer both for altruistic reasons and to earn more money. But as the season wore on and workers grew tired, the organization determined it should provide greater incentives for employees to work longer hours in difficult situations.

Regardless of your philosophy and decisions, you need to notify employees as quickly as possible as to how you plan to manage their pay during the disaster or emergency period.

Finally, if you require employees to continue working (or make a special plea for them to continue), we recommend you not only consider providing them with regular pay, overtime pay as earned, and hazardous-duty pay, but also plan on reimbursing all reasonable expenses, such as transportation and any extra costs employees may incur because of the situation.

Continuation of Benefits

You also need to think about how employees will use their benefits, especially their health care, during an emergency or disaster. What if employees need medical treatment but can’t easily get to a network provider or obtain the proper advance authorizations? What if employees don’t have their medical ID cards with them?

What if they’re stuck at a worksite without their prescription medicines? What if an employee’s eyeglasses break or become lost? HR needs to work with health care providers and administrators to develop procedures for cutting through the red tape to get employees the medical care they need while protecting the company’s financial investments.

Timekeeping

If timekeeping is important in your organization, managers— or others—must assume responsibility for ensuring that employees properly record their work hours. If you change payroll distribution sites, you’ll need to announce the new locations for picking up and delivering timekeeping materials. You should also plan for any special accounting that may be necessary for insurance claim purposes. This generally will require its own documentation.

Work Reassignment

Depending on the situation, you may need to reassign work roles. Employees should be alerted to the new roles as soon as possible. In some cases, you may need to request that employees remain available during regular working hours so they can report to work immediately once you are ready to resume operations.

If you reassign staff to other duties or locations, try to make sure the commuting distance is reasonable. And you should be sensitive to family situations, such as employees needing to find alternative day care services for children, making arrangements for elder care, or attending to other personal business that may interfere with their work—if they are able to get to work.

In extreme situations—such as Hurricane Katrina, in which large communities and entire towns were displaced—major employers such as Wal-Mart encouraged and assisted in the relocation of employees so that they could take jobs at other company locations across the country.

Employee Assistance and Behavioral Health Programs

Most HR crisis veterans will agree that that the area of employee assistance and behavioral health requires planning; expertise, 61often from outside professionals; and investment. Leaders and employees, especially those who have never experienced a disaster, may think they can go it alone both personally and at their jobs without professional help. However, it’s best to mitigate both short- and long-term risks by making such help available. The later chapters in this book address the value of investing in this type of care to help employees heal and return to productive work.

Returning to Work

Some disasters and emergency situations may be so traumatic that employees become apprehensive about returning to work. They worry about their physical and/or emotional safety. They don’t want to re-enter the building, they don’t want to ride in the elevators, and they don’t want to go to certain floors. In these cases, employees have the opportunity to request a leave of absence, according to state and federal leave requirements, and this should be a part of the company’s leave-of-absence policy. In addition, HR and management should direct affected employees to the Employee Assistance Program. If no EAP exists, you should consider bringing in professionals on a temporary or ad hoc basis to help employees deal with the crisis.

When an employee announces that he or she will not be returning to work, the employee’s manager and the HR representative need to establish whether the employee is voluntarily resigning or should be offered a personal leave of absence. In the former case, you should establish a time frame under which a voluntary resignation would occur (such as five days after an employee fails to report to work).

In instances where an employee fears working in the building or location where the incident occurred, you should make a reasonable effort to transfer the employee. However, if the business needs require that the employee work in the building, with no alternative, the manager (or HR) has to notify the employee of the company’s inability to accommodate a transfer, and of the implications. Both the manager and HR staff member should encourage the employee to use EAP resources.

Parking and Other Transportation Issues

When parking accessibility is affected by a disaster or emergency, you should quickly switch over to the parking alternatives provided for in your business continuity plan, and you should communicate the new arrangements. If employees have to pay more for parking than what they had been paying previously, try to reimburse them for their additional parking expenses.

Employees using public transportation who are unable to use their prepaid passes should continue to be reimbursed at the same rate as during normal business operations. The policy statement should limit the extent to which reimbursement continues after a designated time period.

Depending on the nature of your business and the disaster, you may want to secure alternative forms of transportation, such as vans or car services, to bring critical staff members to the company’s business location.

Reimbursement for Lodging and Related Expenses

You may need to secure lodging for employees who are unable to return home following a disaster—a hotel room, apartment, or other form of temporary housing. The policy statement should establish a reasonable time frame for reimbursing expenses based on the scope of the disaster and the company’s ability to pay.

Depending on your company culture, such temporary housing could include shelter in other employees’ homes. Decide ahead of time, as you develop your business continuity plan, whether you want to encourage employees to open their homes to their co-workers, and also whether you want company staff to be involved in the matchmaking.

Employees who are temporarily homeless may face numerous other issues that can hinder their ability to focus on work, even when they’re ready to return. For example, an employee may be separated from his or her spouse and children, who have relocated to another area temporarily; may not have work clothes; or may be hesitant to travel on business trips because of lack of appropriate clothes and a suitcase to pack them in. Also, employees may be preoccupied with the reacquisition of housing. In addition to establishing policies to address this situation, 63 HR staff may choose to devote some time and resources to guiding these employees through the labyrinth of difficulties they face.

Other Policies

Interim policies should be developed for the following areas:

• Flexible working hours. Flextime can be helpful in meeting employees’ personal needs and also in managing resources. For instance, employees whose daily commute time has increased significantly because of the emergency may appreciate the option of working flexible hours. Also, if managers have limited equipment and space for staff—such as one personal computer and two full-time workers who need to use it, or a lack of empty cubicles—they may choose to stagger employees’ hours to accommodate short-term scheduling needs. Also, you could ask employees to work at home and avoid the pressure of finding them new space and equipment. In this situation, the manager, IT division, and HR must ensure that employees have the equipment, network access, and other resources they need to do their jobs. Also, if the manager has never supervised home workers before, he or she needs to get a brief tutorial from HR on the ins and outs of managing a remote workforce.
• Expense reimbursement. HR and senior leaders should determine what guidance they will give to managers and employees concerning the types of reasonable expenses that are eligible for reimbursement in an emergency. For example, will the organization pay for all cell phone calls, not just business-related ones? Will the company provide toll-free numbers that employees can use to avoid incurring toll charges? Will managers be able to provide lunches at company expense for employees who return to work quickly to start rebuilding morale? What if a manager needs to buy some business supplies? Will you authorize special expense accounts that managers and employees can use for emergency-related expenses? How will these expenses be approved?
• Recognition. If you have recognition policies or a special program, review it to determine how well it may be expected 64to work when a disaster strikes. For example, it may be geared more toward acknowledging an employee’s quick thinking to save the day rather than showing appreciation for someone’s lengthy dedication under trying personal and professional circumstances. Think about how you can recognize those individuals who go beyond the normal call of duty.
• Dress code. Give some thought to a dress code appropriate to the situation. Stuffy, formal First Interstate, for example, immediately relaxed its dress code after its building fire in order to have one less “corporate” code for employees to deal with. How important is maintaining a strict business-casual dress code when six people are trying to share one cubicle?
• Availability of HR staff. The HR team needs to develop procedures for HR staff to be available to both managers and employees to assist them with any issues or questions they may have. You may consider making HR staff accessible to all shifts and after hours. Then think about how to get HR staff the support they need to manage their personal lives.
• Contributions from other employees. Employees who aren’t personally inconvenienced by the disaster may be willing to help out their co-workers. Consider the extent to which you will help employees make cash contributions, donate food and clothing, adjust their schedules to cover for employees who can’t work, or give up vacation time.

Planning for Emergency Employee Communication

You should establish the capability for setting up an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) before a disaster so that it can be opened as quickly as possible. Human Resources should have access to all employee contact information, and managers should have contact information for the employees in their departments. This information should include the employee’s home phone number, cell phone number, work e-mail address, 65personal e-mail address, home address, local emergency contact information (phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and street addresses), and out-of-area emergency contact information (phone numbers with area codes and time zones, and e-mail addresses).

You should investigate the use of both electronic and nonelectronic formats for collecting and storing this information, as well as updating it on a regular basis. Even if employees can update this information on their own through your enterprise software, remind them periodically to do so. Keep in mind that a business continuity plan is ineffective if it doesn’t provide for the ability to contact employees.

Develop telephone trees or other means of contacting employees. Be aware that electronic communication will not work if the power goes out, if wiring or cell towers are compromised, or if batteries die.

As Charles Pizzo, the crisis communications expert and Hurricane Katrina evacuee, discovered when the entire telecommunications structure went down (as described on his website, www.charlespizzo.com), people had to be very clever to establish contact. They posted flyers in shelters, advertised on radio and TV, put up banners where people might see them, and posted critical information on websites for those who had left the area and had Internet access at their new locales.

Action Steps

1. Work with senior leadership team to develop a strategic HR philosophy that fits and advances the organization’s vision, mission, and key business strategies. The philosophy should encompass the ways in which the organization plans to:
   • Recruit, select, hire, and develop its people
   • Pay and reward employees
   • Provide care, such as benefits
   • Create a positive and productive workplace through the culture and organizational climate it hopes to achieve
   • Recognize employees for heroic actions
   • Coach, counsel, discipline, and terminate employees who are characterized by poor performance
2. 66 Determine in advance, in the course of business continuity planning, how you will use this philosophy to address employee issues such as the following:
   • Pay
   • Attendance
   • Trauma
   • Benefits
3. Work with communications staff to develop ways to convey these contingent HR policies to employees.