Blindsided is the authoritative guide to crisis management. This "how to" handbook gives essential advice that every manager needs to know when a crisis hits. Written by CMI Founder/CEO Bruce Blythe, it's a fascinating, easy-to-read guide that draws on Blythe's 20+ years of experience as a pioneer in crisis management.

  Businesses help workers learn to cope
      HR News
      Alexandria, VA
      November 2001
      By Margaret M. Clark

To help employees cope with the intense emotions unleashed by September’s jet-bombings of the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon, employers nationwide have taken steps that give profound new meaning to the term “work/life.”

Everywhere, from the attack sites in Manhattan and just outside Washington, D.C., to places thousands of miles distant, employers shifted into high gear to meet the extraordinary human needs created by the national emergency and its aftermath.

Among the companies directly affected in New York, many offered individual and group counseling sessions and opened family assistance centers in midtown hotels, the boroughs and New Jersey. They kept information flowing via disaster-related web sites, started and contributed to victim’s relief funds, and held memorial services to mourn lost colleagues.

Companies near and far from “ground zero” held all-staff meetings, offered on-site counseling, made rounds to check the organization’s pulse and reminded staff about their employee assistance programs (EAPs). HR professionals urged managers to be sensitive to the range of human emotions that might emerge in response to the devastating events.

On Sept, 20, nearly 500 HR professionals convened in midtown Manhattan to hear the advice of psychiatrists, attorneys and coaches on handling the myriad problems in the wake of destruction. The Human Resources Association of New York (HR/NY), a chapter of the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM), sponsored the gathering.

“We are the people-people,” said Chapter President Bob Nadel. “We help our companies manage their workforce and their issues in normal times. When these issues turn to horror, it is our role as HR professionals to help our companies deal with the horror.”

Coping

Getting the business up and running after a disaster is any company’s ultimate goal. But employers “must address the people side of a crisis before they address back-to-work issues,” says Bruce Blythe, CEO of Crisis Management International (CMI). “If you put the cart before the horse, you get outrage.”

Blythe told HR News his company is working with more than 200 companies—80 of them having had offices in the twin towers—’s “crisis management model.”

“More than anything, people need to regain a sense of control. Their reality has been shattered and their personal safety has been threatened. We need to offer reassurance that the world and our surroundings can once again be safe and manageable.”

Survivors of trauma go from an initial numbness to experiencing a rage of emotions including anger, panic, guilt and loss of control, said Blythe, a clinical psychologist and pioneer in the EAP field. Adding to a victim’s emotional turmoil is the likelihood that he or she will not have eaten or slept much in the hours, even days, following a horrific event.

What’s needed is a kind of emotional first-aid for those at-risk of severe traumatic reactions to an incident, Blythe said. “The first step toward coping is to get good information.” Next, the individual should be offered an opportunity to talk about the experience—to feel heard and understood.

“If I cut myself it bleeds,” Blythe said. “But it will seal over and heal without complications. We need to irrigate, to talk it out. That is the same as bleeding.” The wound will seal over whether a company does the right thing or not, said Blythe. “But getting it out will accelerate the recovery.”

People who hold their emotions in check are much more likely to experience post-traumatic stress complications, Blythe said. That includes CEOs, HR manager and other in a position of responding. “In the short term, they’re busy. They don’t have time to deal with all those emotions. They need very purposefully to make sure they take the time to be debriefed.”

So near, so far

Two huge companies—neither of them had offices in the towers and neither of them lost a single employee—were affected significantly enough to being in outside professionals to provide crisis counseling for their workforces. Both are CMI clients.

The Pittsburgh-based Mellon Financial Corp. has about 5,000 employees in the New York/New Jersey area, 1,000 of them housed in several Manhattan locations. Tow of its Manhattan offices were close enough to the twin towers to be struck by falling debris. An as-yet-undetermined number of Mellon employees lost family members in the attack.

Betsy Leavitt is manager of Mellon’s corporate EAP, which employs seven staff counselors, “We started working with CMI on Sept. 11. When [the attacks occurred] we realized this was bigger than we were. We brought in 25 counselors.”

During the first couple of days, the crisis team worked to determine who was affected directly, Leavitt said. They also put together small groups to educate employees, raise concerns and deal with the emotional impact and loss. Leavitt called these “opportunities to get roadmaps to begin the recovery process—solid facts and tools to help them begin.”

Counselors met with employees and management groups. “We literally walk each floor and talk to the people that are there,” Leavitt said. “We tell the managers what they should be looking for, whet they should do if they have and employee who appears to be traumatized.

“Our efforts were focused in the New York/New Jersey area for the first week, then expanded to other offices. Our businesses were intertwined,” Leavitt said. “Our traders were probably talking to people in the World Trade Center when it was hit.”

Liberty Mutual Group, headquartered I Boston, also offered onsite counseling in its offices closest to ‘ground zero’—15 locations in New York and two in New Jersey with a total of more than 1,300 employees, according to Debra Waldstein, vice president of employment and employee relations. Two locations were closed temporarily because of the destruction.

In addition, Liberty Mutual contracted with Ceridian, which provides the company’s child and elder care resource referral services, to provide crisis counseling—via a widely publicized 800 number—specifically for issues related to Sept. 11. If a counselor determined that more in-depth treatment was needed, the employee then would be referred to Liberty Mutual’s medical plans, Waldstein said.

“We’ve had an excellent response to the onsite crisis management counseling,” said Waldstein. People are saying, “I didn’t think I needed it, but I went to a group meeting and found it extremely beneficial. I recognized I wasn’t really dealing with all the issues.”

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