Crisis Management International - Mellon’s crisis team shares employee assistance advice

  Mellon’s crisis team shares employee assistance advice
      HR News
      Alexandria, VA
      November 2001
      By Margaret M. Clark

Diane Doyle-Love is Mellon Financial Corporation’s manager of work/life solutions based in Pittsburgh. Along with the Boston-based corporate EAP manager Betsy Leavitt, she is coordinating Mellon’s response to the attacks in 15 different locations. Mary Beth Leibig, head of human resources of the Dryfus Corp., a wholly owned Mellon subsidiary headquartered in New York, is working in lower Manhattan.

Sounding in a telephone interview more like strong, spirited sister bonded by years of intimacy than long-distance colleagues, it was hard to tell where one woman’s words broke off and another’s chimed in. They told HR News how Mellon’s “people-people” got the job done.

Leibig wants HR professionals to see the big picture. “The whole response has been a terrific opportunity for leaders to lead—leaders within the business line, within the HR team and among employees,” she said. “We have provided the support to enable our business leaders to get back on their feet and do the jobs we need them to do for our shareholders and clients every single day. People would not be able to lead if they did not know that their people would be taken care of.”

For weeks after Sept. 11, there were daily phone calls with senior managers all over the world about business resumption issues, said Doyle-Love, “HR was in those phone calls to address the people issues.”

Mellon has provided “a very structured, on-the-ground model,” Leibig said, including employee debriefing meetings, one-on-one help and family support groups. “Key was listening to what our employees needed, in order to get them back to doing what they do best.”

When the New York Stock Exchange reopened, Dreyfus held 40 debriefing sessions in three days, Leibig said. They used email, print messages and posters to get the word out, and attended to such details as ensuring there were tissues in every meeting room.

When employees participate in a group, they understand that they are not alone, said Doyle-Love. Crisis Management International (CMI) consultants, who were called in to help the company manage its employee assistance efforts, explained, “the normal reactions to an abnormal situations” and offered some ways to “get back to a more normal state,” she said. Because people under extreme stress hear, but do not remember, Mellon also provided a lot of printed handouts.

And what about employees who appear to be troubled, but don’t avail themselves of what’s offered? One approach is to have a manager or someone with a close bond to ask such a person to attend a session as their buddy,” Leibig said. “They’ll do it for their buddy if not for themselves.”

Another way is to say to the person “We’re making this mandatory for everybody in your group, and your time is ‘X,” said Leibig. “We don’t like to do this but we do.”

In extremely resistant cases, Leibig said one of the most talented CMI counselors might just walk into somebody’s cubicle and say, “How’s it going?”

Meanwhile, the EAP team made hundreds of outreach phone calls to people understood to have been affected in some say, based on referrals form managers and the HR team. “They were hugely impactful in terms of response,” said Doyle-Love. She heard of one reaction in particular that made her HR heart sing: “If this is the way that Mellon responds to people, you have an employee for life.”

Weeks after the attacks, some Mellon people were not yet back at work.” A lot of folks were still looking for their lost loved ones.” said Leibig. The internal employee assistance program at Mellon is getting ready for their return.” As appropriate, we will do outreach, provide individual support and offer any other form of resources they might need,” said Leavitt. “We will continue to partner with CMI, most likely bringing them back to work with the impacted people, and do follow-up groups.”

Underpinning the firm’s ability to deliver on the people side lay the number-crunching. “It’s unglamorous,” said Doyle-Love, “but we had to figure out how many people had been impacted and where the support needed to be.”

The Mellon team shares the following messages with their professional peers:

Doyle-Love emphasized the importance of working closely with the company’s corporate affairs department. They are helping to communicate with employees and managers and providing articles on both the people and business perspective.
Leibig stresses the significance of technology within the HR department. “I know some HR people who don’t even have a laptop. We had to work remotely; if we didn’t have strong technical skills—including moving whole databases—we would never have survived. You find out what you need really fast, and you have to know how to do it.”
Leavitt focused on the paramount role of teamwork in the whole effort. It was not just HR, she said. “It was corporate affairs, the information technology staff and the partnership and cooperation or management, as well as the professionals from CMI.

“We were an internal team, ready to go and able to bring CMI in at the very beginning to provide resources. By attending to the personal side, we have helped people stay focused and attend to their own needs.”

  Workplace attack risk can be reduced, not eliminated
      HR News
      Alexandria, VA
      November 2001
      by Robert W. Thompson

Employers should promptly take steps to make their workplaces less vulnerable to terrorist attacks and to reassure employees about safety, but the ways of carrying out such attacks are so varied—and often unforeseeable—that foolproof guarantees of security would be unwise, experts said.

Ways to improve security, consultants said, include doing a better job of preparing employees to recognize and prevent attacks and intrusions, and making better use of policies, personnel and technologies that are already in place or can be readily added at low cost.

Timothy A. Dimoff, president of SACS Consulting and Investigative Services, said the Fortune 500 companies for which his Akron, Ohio, firm provides security reviews are not particularly concerned that an airplane or other vehicle might be intentionally crashed into their buildings.

Major concerns

“The No. 1 concern is what’s coming in and what’s going out of the building—people, packages, mail, bombs, contraband, guns, drugs,” said Dimoff.

Because major terrorist groups are known to be poised to use biological weapons, may companies are worried about potential contaminations of their heating and air conditioning systems, water supplies and food service areas, he said.

However, Dimoff said, the best way to ward off an attack with biological weapons is to ensure that no one is in a position to employ them. That means making sure only employees and authorized nonemployees enter the workplace.

“If you don’t allow [unauthorized] people to get on your roof, they can’t get near your air conditioning,” he said. “If you don’t let [terrorists] in the building, it’s hard to contaminate food or water supplies.”

Michael A. Crane, senior vice president and general counsel ofr IPC International of Bannockburn, Ill., said employers understandably tend to be more reactive than proactive toward terrorist threats.

“There’s a lot of things that you can’t prepare for, and there’s only so much you can do.” said Crane, whose company provides security services—including guards and security plan reviews—for hospitals, shopping centers, corporate offices and other U.S. clients.

“Being proactive with security is costly, with no real return immediately.” he said, adding that terrorist or the threat of terrorism should be treated “as you would any other emergency.”

Companies worried about terrorism should have a certified protection professional (CPP) review their crisis management plans, Crane said. However, employers should use “due diligence” in shopping around for CPPs, he added.

“If someone comes up and says, ‘I’m recommending a $2 million expenditure—that’s what you need,’ then you’ll say, ‘Wait a minute. What has $2 million?” Crane said.

Unwelcomed guests

The most immediate and cost-effective action employers can take to keep unauthorized persons out ot their buildings is to warn employees of the dangersof ‘piggybacking’ at doors and other entrances, said Bruce Blythe, CEO of Crisis Management International of Atlanta.

Blythe said employees should be warned to be wary of those standing near them as they enter the workplace, and should be instructed to never hold the door for someone they don’t recognize as an employee.

Dimoff said that in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, most employees probably will be on their guard against piggybacking. Employers, he aded, can take certain steps to keep that vigilance from eroding.

One way is to use access control cards to monitor the hours that employees work.

“When you access that door, that’s your clocking in. When you leave, that’s you clocking out,” Dimoff said. “And if you don’t have an entrance and an exit, you don’t get paid”

Another effective way to reduce unauthorized entry is to require that all employees enter in one place, and to bar nonemployees form that entrance. Several consultants agreed that visitors, cleaning crews, delivery personnel, contractors and other not on the payroll should access the workplace through separate entrances.

High-tech means of addressing unauthorized entry to the workplace are available. These include devices to identify people through thumbprint and retina scans. But these options are out of the price range of many employers and, because of piggybacking and other human flaws, may be ineffective.

Dimoff, for example, describes how easily he breached security at a client firm that ha d asked him to test its security system, which included three-tiered access.

He arrived at the building and waited by the outer door for an employee to enter. Although most of the firm’s employees wore jeans and T-shirts and Dimoff was I business attire, one worker held the outer door open for him.

Dimoff signed in at the front desk under a fictitious name, got a visitor’s badge and asked to use a restroom.

“they said, ‘Good, no problem.’ From there I go into the bathroom. I look out the door. I waited for the inner security doors to open. Some employee doesn’t look behind him, opens the door…I scoot out of the bathroom and on into the inner perimeter.

“Now, I’ve violated three levels of security. I go down the hall to HR, and I say ‘Hi, I’m Tim Dimoff. I’m here to do your security analysis.’ They go, ‘But we were supposed to come out and get you.’ They couldn’t figure out how the hell I got through.”

Employers may want to consider the use of armed security guards. However, while the presence of these guards might be initially reassuring to employees worried about intruders, security guards often don’t provide much protection, the consultants said.

Blythe said many employees have the same perception of private security guards as do air travelers about the guards used at airports: The guards are poorly trained, underpaid and unmotivated, with a high job turnover rate.

“Basically, security guards are not about reality. They’re about perception [of safety],” he said.

Crane said, “The bottom line with security guards is you get what you pay for.”

When off-duty police officers serve as private security guards, Blythe said, laxness is only slightly less severe.

Moonlighting cops can walk into a workplace and very quickly ‘get a lay of the land,” and are trained in weapons handling and other safety issues, he said.

However, Blythe said, “by about 2 o’clock in the [first] afternoon, they getting kind of bored. They come in on the second day and then they’re sitting there in a chair in the lobby reading the newspaper or star-gazing, and not really noticing the people who walk by: It’s such a boring job!”

Dimoff said the country should take a “different attitude” toward guards. “We have to work toward creating a private security force that is backed up by yearly training, better wages and better benefits.”

Employers concerned about the costs and effectiveness of guars might consider installing or expanding their video monitoring systems.

“Video is a great idea. The cameras are very affordable today,” Dimoff said.

Blythe said employers can make their workers the “eyes ad ears” of workplace security by creating effective threat notification systems.

Employers, he said, should establish written policies telling employees whom they should notify if they hear threats—whether it be the HR department or other on-site entity, or a off-site threat notification center staffed around the clock—and should promise that reports of threats will be confidential.

Blythe said employees should know that their reports will be seen only by those with a true need to know, and that they shouldn’t be concerned about being perceived as overly afraid of violence.

  Mellon’s crisis team shares employee assistance advice
      HR News
      Alexandria, VA
      November 2001
      by Margaret M. Clark

Another way is to say to the person “We’re making this mandatory for everybody in your group, and your time is ‘X,” said Leibig. “We don’t like to do this but we do.”

In extremely resistant cases, Leibig said one of the most talented CMI counselors might just walk into somebody’s cubicle and say, “How’s it going?”

The Mellon team shares the following messages with their professional peers:

Doyle-Love emphasized the importance of working closely with the company’s corporate affairs department. They are helping to communicate with employees and managers and providing articles on both the people and business perspective.
Leibig stresses the significance of technology within the HR department. “I know some HR people who don’t even have a laptop. We had to work remotely; if we didn’t have strong technical skills—including moving whole databases—we would never have survived. You find out what you need really fast, and you have to know how to do it.”
Leavitt focused on the paramount role of teamwork in the whole effort. It was not just HR, she said. “It was corporate affairs, the information technology staff and the partnership and cooperation or management, as well as the professionals from CMI.



		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.