Preface

Do you want to decrease your stress levels, limit trauma, and avoid agony when faced with a disaster at work? We’re not talking about the garden-variety disaster you may encounter weekly, such as your computer crashing, your unreasonable deadline being moved up, or your having to fire an employee who doesn’t fit with your culture. No, we’re talking about dealing with such disasters as floods, murders, riots, bombings, earthquakes, hurricanes, pandemics, and CEO deaths and malfeasance.

Think this doesn’t apply to you? Think again. We are anything but disaster fans, junkies, or authorities, but over our working careers we’ve personally experienced more workplace disasters than we ever imagined possible. In writing this book, we also talked with other HR leaders, communication professionals, operations executives, and other key personnel and listened to their stories. They faced some of the same as well as different disasters at their workplaces.

Why This Book?

We believe the chances are good that many of you will join our ranks before you retire. It’s a dangerous world out there. This is not fatalistic thinking; we’re just being practical. We’d like you to be disaster survivors too, and we want you to handle the unexpected with relative ease by following the lessons we and others have learned the hard way.

In response to our challenges, we took a range of actions. Many were successful, and some not so, as you’ll read. We had to improvise along the way because, for the most part, we had no roadmap to follow. No book like this existed. Instead, we were guided by our courage to act and our commitment to make our employees xii safe and secure, to put our businesses back on track, and to restore some sense of normalcy to the workplace, all as soon as possible.

It’s all too easy to put the planning on hold, claiming we don’t have the time or resources for it, especially when there are so many more pressing issues on our plates at work. And if a plan does exist, it tends to focus on business operations, systems, and structural issues and tasks, ignoring the people side. In the years since September 11, 2001, many companies have recognized the need for planning. Also, a large number of guides have become available on how to establish and carry out emergency preparedness/business continuity plans, but they don’t deal with the human issues.

In our experiences, the human side requires special care, consideration, and action. Certain emotional and psychological themes run through all of these disasters, whether a hurricane, flood, fire, earthquake, civil disturbance, shooting, terrorist attack, or act of corporate malfeasance. In the aftermath of such disasters, employees and their families are fearful, shocked, dismayed, paralyzed, saddened, angered—sometimes all at the same time, but more often in stages that are difficult to predict. After a time—which can range from hours to years—the affected individuals adopt an attitude of resolve and a desire to return to normalcy—although for them normalcy will never be the same.

Our goals with this book are to:

• Give you a jump-start to make sure you become involved in disaster planning and, when you do, you consider the people issues.
• Inspire you to take charge and lead during a disaster. This means taking an active rather than a passive role in planning the response to a disaster, dealing with the human issues of the disaster, and working to restabilize yourself, your employees, and your organization.
• Sensitize you regarding the people issues, and prepare you to anticipate employees’ special emotional and psychological needs so you can deal with them quickly and begin to heal employees’ hearts and minds.

The stories in this book cover a 20-year-span, but the same themes emerge. You could say we’re getting older but not always better at dealing with the human issues in the wake of a crisis. Consequently, this book also serves as a wake-up call for all of us: the xiii veterans of one or multiple crises, the planners who have escaped danger to date, and those who have been putting off the inevitable. We need to get actively involved in dealing with the people dimension of disasters.

The Audience for This Book

The “you” we address throughout this book include Human Resource leaders and staff members; communications professionals, including those responsible for employee communications and media relations; managers in general, and in particular those who want to assume a leadership role and build strong relationships with employees and other work colleagues; and employees who want to empower themselves.

You—especially the HR and communications professionals as well as the managers—all play a critical role in dealing with people issues in your day-to-day jobs. Your special skills are even more crucial in disaster preparedness and response efforts.

In times of crises, Human Resources and Public Relations— the two professions that most affect people inside and outside their organizations—need to adopt a special mindset. We need to view ourselves respectively as Human Relations and People Relations. When a disaster strikes, our primary role is to serve as leaders and protect people.

Despite all the differences between the sorts of disasters we and others have experienced, we have observed many common themes, starting with the number one, absolute requirement: HR professionals must assume leadership in preparing for disasters and taking action when disasters strike, focusing especially on people issues.

According to Libby Sartain, Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Chief People Yahoo at Yahoo! Inc., in the event of an emergency, HR leaders must be prepared to lead the leaders.¹

We agree. We also think that others, especially communications professionals, need to be prepared as well. In the face of fear, it’s human nature to want to flee. For the sake of employees and the organization, those who want to stay and fight—or those who reluctantly agree to stay and work—must rise to the challenge and deal with the crisis at hand.

One of the key questions that you have to answer for yourself— and this book can help you do that—is whether you have the capabilities for dealing with the dynamic situation a disaster presents, especially the need to remain on the scene and act as a leader.

There’s one more point to note before jumping into the book. Many of the individuals who have shared their stories with us come from large companies. As a result, they have resources at their disposal that those of you at smaller organizations might not. That’s no excuse for putting off planning or running from a disaster. Instead, you just need to be more creative about how you use outside help, which is often available at no or little cost. Throughout this book, we mention some resources and ideas to consider if you work for a small to mid-size company.

How to Use This Book

This book is an action guide, not a textbook, so use it in any way that will encourage you and help you act. You’ll find that subjects such as communications, trauma counseling, and Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) appear in several chapters rather than being covered comprehensively in individual chapters. We did this because communications, trauma, and the EAP are so intertwined in disaster planning/preparedness and business continuity planning that we wanted to reinforce integrated planning and execution.

The book is divided into three main sections.

Part I: Planning for Disasters

Specifically, this section covers:

• How to adopt the mindset needed to prepare for and deal with disasters, including making sure you have the necessary capabilities to act in the face of fear
• How to include the people perspective in your disaster planning
• What to consider in the creation of contingent HR policies

This section, especially Chapter 2 , defines the basic terms used in the book, such as business continuity plan and disaster.

Part II: Dealing with Disasters

This section addresses:

• How to take care of employees, with the emphasis on their safety
• How to support managers and HR staff
• How to balance employee needs and get back to business
• How to get employees back on track
• How to start the healing process and then gain momentum with it
• Quick steps you can take immediately to help you plan effectively

The Resources Section

This section includes:

• Resources, including articles, books, and websites, to help you along the way
• A business continuity outline that can serve to jump-start your planning efforts
• A sample telephone tree for notifying people
• A sample wallet card detailing the actions to take in the event of a disaster
• Employee emergency response procedures
• Suggestions of what to do at home

Read—or, more realistically—skim the chapters and sections that interest you, in any order you want, with one exception: Start with the Prologue if you question the value of planning for and paying attention to disasters. The deluge of disasters that befell one of the authors in a short period of time should make you a believer in the benefits of disaster planning.

Use the index if you want to find particular topics.

Also check out the book’s website at www.leadingpeoplethroughdisasters.com, which includes a feedback section. We’re interested in your ideas and suggestions and any steps you’ve taken, especially if they may be of benefit to others. A disaster is daunting enough without having to go it alone.

Principles to Live and Work By

For you to optimize the value of this book and successfully deal with disasters, especially their human aspect, we suggest you adopt these three principles:

1. Have an emergency preparedness/business continuity plan. You and your organization must have a comprehensive, multifaceted emergency preparedness/business continuity plan that focuses on the business issues, in addition to dealing with the human issues. No one can predict the type or timing of a disaster, but chances are great that something will happen sometime, and sooner than you might think. If you’ve got a plan, you’ll be better able to respond to the situation and recover faster.
2. Prepare to lead. You must be prepared to assume a leadership role in planning for and taking action when disasters strike. This means taking the time to develop plans and executing them immediately when needed, without asking permission— especially where people’s safety, security, and health are at stake. You need to recognize and remember you are in the best position to deal with the complex, unfolding human side of these events, both short- and long-term. Yet you must also realize you cannot do this alone. You must work closely with individuals from many disciplines, both inside and outside the organization.
3. Expect the unexpected. Regardless of how much planning you do, you must appreciate you will still experience the unexpected when a disaster strikes and you will have to adjust your plans on the fly. This may include propping up any of the organization’s leaders who can’t deliver in a crisis and supporting those who rise to the occasion. And these days it also may mean cleaning up after an executive or team of executives who caused or contributed to a man-made disaster, whether it involves corporate fraud, ethical lapses, insider trading, or some other type of malfeasance.

By adopting these principles and attending to the lessons we and others have learned the hard way, we hope you plan thoroughly, act quickly, and always show courage. Disasters require leaders.