Leading Your Company Through a Crisis

6. Have a plan for dealing with the media.
Tell your employees how to respond if the media contacts them. " Lay out defined media rules," recommends Call. " List the do' s and don' ts. Clarify who talks to whom." Tell employees to whom they should forward media requests. Tell them what kinds of requests and calls they might expect. For the people who will be speaking with media, be clear about what' s OK to discuss, and what' s out of bounds. And explain to your staff why you' re taking the position you are on this subject.

Post-crisis & recovery
7. Keep your eyes open for displaced anger and other employee productivity problems.
" When crisis strikes, people are going to displace their anger about it - often on the company," says Burley. " Be prepared for outrage. This can happen especially in the case of industrial accidents, or other situations where employees can find a way - a way that may very well seem irrational to you -- to place blame for an incident onto the company itself." So, even quite some time after crisis hits, she recommends keeping your eyes peeled for disgruntled employees.

Also, keep your eye out for signs of other problems. Problems like alcoholism and drug abuse commonly rise in the wake of stressful events and disasters. " Frequently, people won' t show signs of these problems in obvious ways," says Burley. " But these kinds of things can go on for years after an event." What to do about it? Ask your line managers and supervisors to watch for unusual behavior among employees. " Be open to the warning signs. Usually warning signs come in the form of people behaving irregularly. Tell supervisors what to look for, and who to talk to if they suspect something is wrong."

What kinds of warning signs should they be on the lookout for? If someone who is always punctual starts coming in to work later and later, with no explanation why, that could signal a problem. Or maybe someone who has always been a strict nine-to-fiver starts working very long hours, without a significant increase in workload. Perhaps someone starts having a lot of trouble with criticism, when criticism never bothered them much before. Maybe it's a sudden difficulty in recalling instructions, or suddenly missing more deadlines than usual. In short, keep an eye out for anything that seems to demonstrate a significant deviation from what was formerly " normal" behavior for that particular employee.

8. Anniversaries are stressful. Be ready.
The effects of a major disaster on you and your employees can be long-lasting. Keep in mind that it' s not just in the few weeks after a crisis that employees can be affected - emotionally, health-wise, and from a productivity standpoint. Sometimes you can see the effects years later. In particular, anniversaries are high-risk and stressful periods, Call warns. Take, for example, the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995. One month after the bombing, Call founded Project Heartland to provide counseling, support groups, outreach, and education to individuals affected by the bombing. Project Heartland was America's first community mental health program developed in response to a terrorist event. Recent statistics he has collected clearly demonstrate the long-lasting effect that such events can have. At the 6-month point, in October 1995, 19 rescue workers were seen for reasons related to the bombing. In November 1995, 17 workers sought counseling. By contrast, a full 103 rescue workers sought the help of Project Heartland counselors in April 1999 -- the 4-year anniversary of the bombing. " It' s important to remember that fallout will be seen, even years out," he says.

9. Don' t expect productivity to get back to normal for a while.
Grace Burley explains that it' s common for companies affected by a crisis to see a pattern in productivity levels: first, a dramatic drop in productivity, followed by a spike back to close-to-normal levels, and then another drop-off that takes a long time to creep back up to nearly-normal levels again. Sure, you need to keep your business running, and cash coming in the door. But the experts say that it can actually be detrimental to your company and employees if you push too hard to get back to normal. " Give employees time; don' t expect normalcy. Use disaster experts if you need them to help speed up the process, by starting the individual recovery process for all of your employees. That way, as a group, you can start to move forward." If you don' t start this process, then people will tend to internalize their stress and anxiety, and you might see symptoms like increased absenteeism, increased turnover, and depression. " Especially in the wake of a tragedy like September 11, business will probably never be the same again. So as a leader, you need to adjust your expectations based on that new reality," Burley says.

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