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Beware of Complacency! What HR Managers
Should Be Doing for the Post-September 11th Workplace

As you move towards addressing these questions, you may face resistance or rationalizations around your immunity or competing priorities that sound like this: “We’re not near Ground Zero.” “We didn’t lose employees in the attacks.” We’re not situated in or near a symbolic building.” “We’re in the suburbs.” We have so much other work to do.” In short, why spend time going backwards and not forwards, and planning for what is likely to never occur again, or to us directly?

Be apprised: therein lies the ingredients of complacency, an enemy we can individually and collectively face and undo now by our own direct actions.

There are three steps you can initiate immediately to ensure that your organization learns and is better prepared in our Post-September 11th world. In looking at these steps take note: Don’t belabor steps 1 and 2; they should be handled relatively quickly…. The prize is in step 3.

Step 1: ANALYZE YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSE

Assess what worked well and what didn’t in terms of your actual (versus intended) crisis response practices. Gather data to answer the questions that are most relevant to your organization. Here are some items to debrief:

• What were the goals of our crisis response efforts? Were they clear and did they guide the actions we took?
• Related to our goals, were we successful? In who’s eyes? Where did we fall short of expectations? Where did we exceed expectations?
• What were the values that we communicated by our response? Were they the values that we wanted to exemplify?
• What did we do well and what could we have done better in terms of communication of information related to: what had happened; what was happening; what concerns experts still had for what might happen?
• How effective were our exit strategies (i.e, Did we have clear exit strategies in place in case we had to evacuate our premises? If used, how did they work? Did people know about them?)
• Did we know how to locate and/or contact employees quickly?
• What worked well and what might have worked better in terms of dealing with employee family concerns or questions, during the crisis and afterwards?
• Were there instances where we over-reacted or under-reacted? How would we know? If so, what may have caused an over or under reaction to occur?
• Were our priorities clear and compelling? Did people understand why the organization responded as it did?
• Did our employees know or need to know of any efforts we initiated to connect with the needs at Ground Zero?
• How would the actions and communications of our senior leadership, line management, and HR be rated?
• What were the pressing needs of our employees on September 11th? One week out? One month out? Three months out? How have we assessed and met those needs?

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