Workplace Crisis Preparedness & Management: A Guide for Employers

There are a variety of workplace crises that you may deal with as HR professionals. These crises can take many forms, including but not limited to natural disasters, employee trauma, and workplace violence. Regardless of whether the crisis is direct or indirect, it may affect your employees, causing disruption, stress, fear, injury and other physical, emotional, or psychological responses that in turn affect your business. HR plays an important role in helping prevent, manage, and respond to these types of crises, and there are a variety of steps you can take to prepare for and manage such crisis:

• Prepare for crisis: create a plan. A disaster recovery or crisis response plan should be in place. It’s necessary to identify all of your critical business systems and develop plans for their recovery, should a crisis or disaster occur. The plan should include details regarding emergency response procedures, communications, critical systems and applications, vital documents/records, and plan for continuation of operations after a disaster.  It’s also imperative that the plan is tested, to ensure that any gaps or deficiencies are addressed. In addition, ensure that clear and thorough policies and procedures are in place to address crisis such as workplace violence, harassment, and other emergencies.

• Manage crisis: communicate and educate. Effective communication and training/education are crucial to preventing and managing crisis. Policies and procedures regarding disaster planning and crisis response need to be communicated openly and accurately, so that all employees have a good understanding. In addition, consider providing training and education to employees and supervisors on relevant topics such as safety, workplace violence prevention, harassment, crisis communication, conflict resolution, and stress management. After a crisis, communicate the resources available to employees, should they be impacted by the crisis. Possible communication methods could include sending an interoffice email, putting a handout in interoffice mail, or calling a town-hall meeting to present the options available.

• Respond to crisis: provide support. Providing support is the most critical part of responding to a crisis. Support can be manifested in a number of ways – via the support of peers (coworkers, supervisors, and leaders), the offering of support services and programs, or simply your organization’s response to employees’ questions and concerns surrounding the crisis. A culture of support and mutual respect amongst coworkers, supervisors, and leaders helps create the crucial social support employees need to be able to deal with crisis effectively. Employees should feel comfortable communicating their concerns openly with their supervisors or HR. In addition, it’s important to make support services available, such as grief counseling or an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) so that employees can seek help if necessary. Finally, be aware that employees may come to you with questions and concerns about the crisis, and perhaps even have suggestions and questions about ways they can reach out to those directly affected by the crisis. You could provide information to employees about how to donate money to the cause at hand. This could be a list of charities or a donation fund set up inside your own organization. 

There have been a number of studies suggesting that organizations that provide some level of assistance to their employees following a crisis or disaster see reduced stress levels, decreased absenteeism, and reduced workers compensation costs, and more positive employee attitudes. While crisis threatens to affect our workplaces, there are many ways, as described above, that we as HR professionals can mitigate its effects and use it as an opportunity to reach out, provide support, and strengthen the operations of our organizations. In doing so, consider referring to several resources provided through your ERC membership (provided below).

Resources for Members

• Training: For more information regarding training pertaining to topics including crisis communications, personal safety/self-defense, workplace violence prevention, harassment, conflict resolution, and stress management, please contact Chris Kutsko at ckutsko@ercnet.org.  You can check out a number of speakers on these topics via ERC's Speakers Bureau.
• Disaster preparedness: Through ERC’s partnership with the Greater Cleveland Chapter of the American Red Cross, members receive a 25% savings on the Guide to Business Continuity Planning CD-ROM and a 10% savings on BEPA (Business Emergency Planning Association) Membership & Annual Conference.  Click here for contact info. 
• Employee assistance programs: Grief counseling services are available for employees in need following a workplace crisis through ERC partner, Ease@Work.
• Preventing workplace accidents:  ERC partner, FirstEnergy BETA Labs, offers comprehensive OSHA training to keep you in compliance and help prevent accidents at work.     
• Managing workers comp claims:  Accidents can still happen despite an employer’s best efforts.  In these cases, ERC partner, ERSco, works with employers to manage workers’ compensation claims early in the process - before costs escalate, jeopardizing group rating savings status.   
• Looking for an MCO?  ERC endorses partner, Advocare, for comprehensive group health and workers compensation case management programs, utilization review, vocational rehab, on-site therapy, transitional work programs, and expert opinions for disability determination.
• Travel risk management:  Did you know that your organization has a legal responsibility, referred to as “duty of care”, to take reasonable measures to protect the wellbeing of your employees – including those traveling in foreign countries?  Would you be prepared if you had employees traveling in a foreign country when disaster struck?  For help establishing a travel risk management program to address this responsibility, contact ERC partner, Professional Travel.
• Avoiding technology disaster:  ERC partner, Thinsolutions, can work with your IT group to implement effective protocols to minimize the impact of any workplace crisis that might affect your technical operations. 

HR Help: For sample  policies, procedures, and communications or for general HR questions pertaining to workplace crisis, please email our HR Help-Line at hrhelp@ercnet.org