Chapter 4
Taking Care of Employees

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Seven steps to take immediately following a disaster to ensure that employees are safe and accounted for
• Managerial self-awareness and self-control
• Caring for employees under extreme conditions
• Tips for managing the human side of a crisis

Overview

Taking care of employees immediately after a disaster means making sure they are safe and secure. That’s the overarching issue for the employees and their families. Once that’s taken care of, you need to lead both purposefully and symbolically to get employees out of crisis mode and back to work. Your leadership actions will ease the employees’ anxiety, help to resolve and address the ambiguity of the situation, and provide employees with a sense of purpose, direction, and hope.

Seven Critical Steps

The broad actions you must take to deal with the human side of a crisis can be condensed into these seven procedures, generally performed in this order:

1. Make sure the Incident Commander has assumed control and has started to give directions, such as ordering the opening of the Emergency Operations Center if the incident is serious enough to warrant such action.
2. 70Account for all employees on the premises to make sure they are safe and secure, and they are getting any needed medical care. Locate employees who were not at the disaster location to make sure they are also safe and secure, and determine if they need any help.
3. Tell employees what immediate actions you’re taking and what they need to do; also inform the media as appropriate. Use whatever means you have at your disposal to contact and communicate with employees. (See Chapters 2 , 5, and 7 for suggestions.)
4. Make adjustments on the fly to respond to changes in the situation.
5. Role-model the behavior you want from employees.
6. Assess the need for trauma counseling (including screening) and, if counseling is needed, make arrangements for it.
7. Repeat this process as needed, starting with step 3.

The number of times you will repeat the seven-step process depends on the type of disaster, its scope, and the degree of trauma to which your employees are exposed. For example, in terms of the employees’ safety and security, you have to deal with both reality and perception. Sometimes people perceive that they’re in a safe spot but are actually in danger, as in the case of someone driving on roads with downed power lines after a storm to get to family members. At other times people perceive that they’re in a danger zone, such as a person riding an elevator to an upper floor a few months after a building fire or earthquake, but in fact they’re experiencing post-traumatic stress.

Also, events can unfold over the course of minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months, with frequent changes, which is another reason to keep this cycle going. The information you share with employees should consist of more than factual updates. If you provide helpful hints on managing stress and coping with issues related to the disaster, you’ll be encouraging employees to regain a sense of control over their situation, which will be empowering. Included at the end of this chapter is an example of the information First Interstate provided its employees to help them deal with stress.

Modeling Self-Awareness and Self-Control

The longer a crisis continues, the harder it becomes for leaders to stay calm and confident; but they need to maintain that state, or at least project it. Self-awareness and self-control are key competencies in a crisis. If you lose your cool, you’ll contribute to the confusion and make things worse. And if you shut down due to the emotional shock, you won’t be able to do your job and lead.

As Joe Bagan, Southeast Region Senior Vice President for Adelphia Communications (the cable company), explained, “I work with and teach my leadership team to project confidence and calm. There’s enough chaos and stress to go around. You can’t look as if you’ve got your hair on fire. That plus any other aura signs you display in your writing, speaking, or movements will leak out and cause more disarray.” It is important for a leader to keep a demeanor of professionalism—along with empathy and passion—and to serve as a role model on how to behave.

Also, regardless of your leadership style under normal conditions, you need to adopt a command-and-control management structure when disaster strikes. Taking control to the extent possible will help you stabilize the situation, minimize risks, and avoid additional problems.

Caring for Employees under Extreme Conditions

The following, true story of Edgewater Technology illustrates how company leaders quickly sprang into action when disaster struck during what was expected to be a quiet day during a slow period at work. Although Edgewater didn’t have a business continuity plan (except for plans for dealing with a building fire), the company had leaders who thought on their feet, responded rapidly, and took care of their employees. This story also shows how the company involved employees in the recovery process.

An Unforeseen and Unimaginable Scenario

On Tuesday, December 26, 2000, a disgruntled employee entered the Wakefield, Massachusetts, lobby of Edgewater Technology and 72 shot and killed the receptionist and the Director of Human Resources, who happened to be standing in the reception area. The employee gunman then walked down the hall and killed three more employees, and then went to the Accounting Department, where he took out two more. In total, seven employees lost their lives.

Minutes after the shootings, Kathleen McComber, the Vice President of Human Resources at the time, learned about the situation from news reports at her Little Rock, Arkansas, location. She immediately contacted the company CEO in Wakefield. A crisis management team was established. These individuals included the president at the Wakefield site and her senior management team, the corporate legal counsel, the corporate CFO, the corporate CEO, and McComber herself.

That afternoon the team interviewed and selected a team of Boston-area resource professionals. Because they were local, they would be familiar with local issues and could start to work immediately. The team also took on several new members, including a crisis management consultant, lawyers, crisis counselors, and a host of community supporters. The crisis team sought skills and expertise in communications, disaster recovery, law, counseling, and security.

Caring for the Victims’ Families

McComber explained, “During a four-hour conference call we developed and put into action a plan to support the victims’ families and our employees. The health of, support for, and communication with these two groups were our first priorities.”

The crisis team assigned a member of the management group to each family affected by the shooting. This manager was to be the sole contact with the family, so that there would be only one avenue of communications and he or she would be responsible for keeping them updated about the plans. All information concerning benefits and other employee matters flowed through this person. Each manager contacted his or her assigned family on the first night and continued to communicate on a daily basis, or more frequently, if necessary, and also visited the family at home.

Caring for the Wakefield Site Employees

Immediately after the shootings, the president at the Wakefield site closed the office and sent everyone home. By Thursday, two days 73 later, Edgewater Technology had signed up all the surviving Wake-field employees in critical-incident support therapy at an off-site location. These sessions lasted about two hours. The group sessions continued for several days. The company made available one-on-one counseling sessions as well.

The crisis team also set up an employee hotline and contacted as many people as possible via e-mail, telephone, and personal visits. Because it was the holiday season, many employees were away. Nonetheless, the team made every attempt to reach them personally so they would know what had happened before they returned. They also would know why productivity had slipped during that week. They would thus be prepared in advance to deal with that, as well as to anticipate their own lowered productivity once they returned.

In a location apart from the off-site space used for counseling, the team set up a command center. The new site was a visible means of demonstrating support for employees and the crisis team. For employees, the site served as a central meeting place where they could talk with and support each other during this time of crisis. In addition, the site allowed the crisis team members to remain physically separated from the media and other distractions, including the ongoing business. The team members wanted to focus on the crisis at hand.

The crisis team also made arrangements to inform employees in all the other locations what had happened, and the actions the company was taking to help the victims’ families and the surviving employees.

Involving Employees in the Recovery Process

One of the decisions the crisis team made after their initial planning was to engage Wakefield employees as much as possible in the recovery. McComber said, “We involved our employees in many of the decisions we made during the next week, including when to return to work, how to acknowledge the lives of those murdered, and how to handle the affected worksite.”

Employees gladly stepped up to the challenge. According to McComber, “They were very considerate and thoughtful in their comments and ideas. Staff members made some important suggestions, such as using members of middle management to work the hotline, making one-on-one counseling available 24 hours a day, 74 holding a company-sponsored memorial service for the victims, and delaying the formal return to work until one week after the shooting.”

Coming Back to Work

Employees returned to work one week after the shooting. It was a week of adjustment, and the Wakefield site leaders allowed people to select the number of hours they wished to work. “There wasn’t much being accomplished, but it gave staff the opportunity to come together at the Wakefield location,” McComber said. “Most took time off to attend all the memorial services and visit the homes of the victims. We allowed those who did not wish to return to the Wakefield location to work at the command center as long as they wanted to.”

The crisis team scheduled the memorial service for the victims a few days after the formal return to work, in early January 2001. Volunteers spoke about each person, sharing details of their working life together at Edgewater. “It was extremely touching and was a way for them to express their love and appreciation to each one,” McComber remembered.

External Communications

Company representatives addressed the media only through the communications specialists, who also produced all press releases. By consolidating communications through one source, the company was able to limit mistakes or misunderstandings that might have occurred if several people had given interviews or statements. This process also allowed leaders to focus more of their energy on employees. The company did hold a press conference the Friday after the Tuesday shooting to communicate how employees were coping and what the company was doing for them and for the victims’ families.

Follow-up

Edgewater Technology set up a foundation for the victims’ families and made a donation. They also encouraged donations from employees and the community. According to McComber, this was another way to show support for the families. It was also a way for employees at other Edgewater Technology sites to do something constructive.

Even though people returned to work shortly after the incident, its aftereffects continue five years later. The employee gunman went to trial in 2002. As of December 2005, he is in jail after being convicted of seven counts of first-degree murder. His appeal is pending.

Lessons in Leading

Five years later, McComber reflected on her own reactions to the situation: “It was an emotional two weeks for me. I felt I was on autopilot most of the time, but it was necessary for me to remain strong while giving our staff and others the support they needed. I started out functioning purely on gut instinct and ended up leading the efforts on all the people issues faced by the team.” The CEO was responsible for the corporate focus and the face presented to the press. HR and the corporate counsel, as well as outside counsel, dealt with the legal implications of the tragedy.

McComber continued, “Only after I returned to my home in Little Rock did I begin to let myself grieve for those who had died and for their families. I felt we had done our very best and had given everyone the greatest possible support during the crisis. It was a daunting time, but we came through it, and the organization slowly returned to being productive. So did I.”

With the benefit of hindsight, McComber noted that it would have been helpful to train employees and managers to recognize signs in employees who might be suffering from abuse, suppressed rage, or any number of other emotional conditions.

Nonetheless, the feedback from employees was very positive concerning the actions the Edgewater Technology leaders took during and after the shootings. “The majority felt we had provided them the support and counseling they needed,” McComber said.

Tips for Managing the Human Element

The keys to managing the human side of of a crisis such as the one that befell Edgewater Technology include:

• Putting employees first and getting help to them, as well as to the victims’ families, immediately
• 76 Pulling together a senior management team and having them meet daily to work through all of the issues
• Recruiting experts to help the senior management team and the employees, especially for behavioral health issues and sensitive media issues
• Involving employees in as many decisions as possible (for a natural disaster, this may occur after you’ve started the business recovery)
• Communicating regularly both to inform and to alleviate anxieties

These actions are time-intensive and energy draining. Yet they can produce a multitude of benefits as employees recognize that you’re just not saying you care for them, but you’re also showing them you do. You’re a true leader and employer of choice.

Action Steps

1. Consider the special steps taken by Edgewater mangement in incorporating employee care into your business continuity planning.
2. Use the Wakefield example as a tabletop scenario to practice managing this type of crisis.
3. Think about how you can use “muster sites” to enhance employee communications during a disaster.