Navigating through a pandemic as an HR Leader: A perspective from a CHRO with 30 years of Emergency Management Experience

I have been a CHRO of 2 global, publicly-traded manufacturing companies and have 25+ years of human resources experience working with large companies as well as small start-up's. In addition, for the past 30 years, I have served as a member of my County’s Office of Emergency Management, where my focus has been on Emergency Preparedness and Response. Since 1999, I co-led the Public Information Bureau; charged with disseminating information to the public and the media during times of emergency in the County.

It is through both of these lenses that I thought that I might offer some unsolicited “food for thought” for my HR colleagues or business leaders who have to make decisions on how to safeguard your company and its employees from the short and long-term impact of the current COVID-19 crisis. These are challenging and confusing times for leaders and a lot of pressure is being put on the HR function. HR is being asked to help companies manage and maintain a transition to Work From Home, create workforce plans to deal with potential downturns or upswings in business, help to stabilize an unsettled workforce as well as assist with employee health and safety issues to prevent infection and/or spread of COVID-19 should an employee test positive. 

It almost goes without saying that pandemics have enormous, short and long-term impacts on companies, economies, and societies. By nature, we live and work in social organizations. During a pandemic, it is those very social interactions that create uneasiness and potential danger that can help to spread the disease. As we have seen in the NY metropolitan area and other parts of the US and around the world, to prevent the spread of COVID-19, people have been directed to physically isolate themselves; the exact opposite of the way we all have lived our lives to this point. 

As leaders of an organization, most of us have built business continuity plans, helping our workforces to transition fairly quickly to Work From Home (WFH) arrangements. But now comes the hard part. How do we sustain this style of work if it takes us 3 months, 6 months or more before we can return to “normal” social distances? And what happens if the virus returns?

To that end I wanted to share my thoughts in the hope that they might potentially guide and help you as you work through the coming days, weeks and months:

1.      Communicate, Communicate, Communicate—and be as transparent as possible, even if you don’t have all of the answers

During times of uncertainty, employees want to understand what actions are being taken today, what the plan is for tomorrow and how we will move forward together over the longer term. Those are not easy questions to answer, especially as things change moment-to-moment. But if Leadership doesn’t communicate to employees until they have the answer to all of those questions, people will “fill the vacuum” and will make up their own answers, potentially imagining worst-case scenarios or spreading false information or rumors. 

• Employees want and expect answers. But with that, they can accept that Leaders don’t have all of the answers. Coach your Executive team to be transparent - communicate what they know and what they are focused on. Try to sync up messages across the Executive team, being authentic while reinforcing the company’s culture and values and keeping people focused on the Mission. Be a model for the other executives.
• Build empathy – acknowledge the disruption that is happening to employees from a work-life and a home-life perspective.
• Help employees feel connected to you, to their co-workers and the organization. Communicate regularly using different channels or mediums. Leverage video meeting platforms for 1-on-1 interactions and larger group meetings. But keep in mind, it’s a good idea to vary the medium to meet everyone’s needs. Some people prefer to read and refer back to leadership blogs, emails and attached documents in their search for information, while others may prefer to listen to a podcast. The key is to provide diverse communication to meet the needs of all your employees. That said, I believe the more we can see each other face-to-face the more connected we will feel.
• Here is a link to my website where you can download my template, 5 Keys to Effective Emergency Communications for Leaders.

An example of effective, well done Emergency Communication would be NY Governor Cuomo’s Daily COVID-19 Briefings. He gives clear, fact-based overviews of the situation each day. He consistently provides statistics and details on plans and their status. He answers what he knows and admits when he doesn’t know something. He is calm and engages his team. He also responds with empathy and connects with people’s suffering and disruption, even providing personal stories of how this is affecting him and his family. Regardless of political affiliation, his briefings follow the classic model of Emergency Communication.

2.      Use Scenario Planning to develop plans to sustain the business, assuming that you will be working in this manner for twice as long as you could possibly imagine. 

We honestly don’t know how long this situation will last. Social distancing and work from home are dependent on variables that are beyond our control such as a vaccine being developed. For multi-location employers, you may have facilities in different stages of the infection curve. The flip-side could also be true; you may have to prepare for a rapid recovery. Market demand for some products or services may skyrocket during this time, while others may disappear almost overnight. Planning for both scenarios/possibilities now is key because the landscape can change very quickly and dramatically as time progresses. This is the time to use your imagination and apply Agile Methodology into your strategic planning (https://hbr.org/2016/10/make-your-strategy-more-agile). Leverage this real-time situation, collect and discuss lessons learned and think ahead to consider how the organization will develop better capabilities to predict future disruptions or changing market dynamics and more quickly adapt to them.

In Emergency Management, we conduct a series of Hazard Assessments and build initial response, recovery and mitigation plans for all of them. We engage people from multiple services and jurisdictions to gain a diversity of thought, utilizing data and risk assessment, as well as a healthy amount of imagination to think through a multitude of possible scenarios and outcomes. Then, we routinely conduct exercises to evaluate, fine-tune and sharpen those plans. I can remember in August of 2001, we conducted a live response exercise of a terrorist attack at a large shopping mall in NJ. As I was escorting a member of the press through the scene, the reporter ridiculed us for thinking that a terrorist attack could happen again in the NY Metro area. Talk about timing! A month later on 9/11/2001, I saw that same reporter at our Emergency Operations Center and the reporter apologized.

3.      Plan ahead (now) for “Reintegration”

Once the “All Clear” is given by the medical professionals, Leadership should not expect employees to return to business as usual immediately. This experience will fundamentally change people’s perception of social interaction. Some employees may be hesitant to come back to work. 

Determine the steps you will take to make employees feel “safe” as they transition back to the workplace. Alternatively, define the protocol addressing and helping team members who are reluctant to return to the office or continue work that requires customer interaction. What specific policies and procedures will you have in place that both enable the business to get back on its feet but also demonstrates empathy to employees who are dealing with a new trauma. How will you utilize your Employee Assistance Program (EAP)?

Pandemics often come in waves. Should we face a second wave, how will you mitigate further spread in your facilities? What is the protocol should an employee test positive once people have started to return to work? How quickly can you shift back to WFH? Reflect on your Lessons Learned and be better prepared for the next time. Also, this constant state of hypervigilance or stress can take a toll not only on the employees but also on the Leadership team. How will your leadership team take care of its members? What are you doing to take care of yourself (mind, body, and spirit)?

In Emergency Management, we have Plan Annexes for Mental Health. After a major incident, we not only resolve the emergency (Fire, Mass-casualty incident, etc), but we also plan for the psychological impacts of large-scale disasters. We plan for crisis counseling and social services support for members of the public who are impacted. However, we also plan on how to take care of the Emergency Service professionals to help them mitigate the effects of Critical Incident Stress through debriefings and other interventions.

4.      What is the new Future of Work?

The silver lining of this large disruption is that it can provide us with an opportunity to reimagine how we accomplish the work of our organizations. Take time now to think about what changes you will make moving forward. Maybe your business model needs to fundamentally change?  Perhaps your organization and your workforce will require new capabilities as you move forward from here? Thinking through changes to more tactical issues like meetings, travel, work processes, technology or open office environments should all be “on the table”.   Perhaps your workforce has risen to the occasion of working from home. This could be an opportunity to allow greater flexibility for team members and the workforce going forward. 

In Emergency Management, after a large event (hurricane, etc.) we also work on Mitigation. How do we prevent the effects of these events from happening again? How do we harden infrastructure to avoid future power outages or floods? How do help people move out of flood-prone areas and ensure people don’t build there again? We also install or improve early warning systems to give Emergency Management professionals and the public more advanced warning.

People are resilient and can adapt to change. We know that and we have proven that over the centuries. We always come back strong and succeed. How we manage our employees and our work during these challenging times is the central role of Leadership. This is an opportunity to create loyalty amongst your team/employees based on how you lead them through this crisis. Leverage your imagination to think through scenarios, plans, and organizational designs to help your company adapt quickly and potentially give you a competitive advantage during future times of uncertainty. This is a very jarring experience for most people, it is one that no one in today’s workforce has ever experienced as this virus has impacted the entire world at the same time and not just part of it. Even if the current virus suddenly mutates and disappears, there will be lasting social and psychological implications of what we have been through. The only thing that is certain is that things will not go back to the way they were. As Leaders, it’s our responsibility to set the new course and support and guide our people as the world recovers from this pandemic. And know, as you take on this tremendous challenge, you are not alone. I have seen countless CHRO’s sharing their knowledge and supporting one another through this difficult time which is why I wanted to share my insights with you and would be happy to continue to do so.

Stay well, everyone!

Rob Sklans is a senior Human Resources executive with an extensive track record of transforming and building HR functions globally. He is also a trusted adviser and coach to executive teams and boards of global companies.

Rob currently provides consulting services for start-up through mid-sized companies in the biotech, consumer products, pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals, and technology industries.

Previously, as Chief HR Officer at Innophos, Rob created and launched a 4-year global HR strategy to support the company's plans to grow into a $1.25Bn company by 2022. As CHRO at Elementis, he created and led the global HR function and served as a Supervisory Board Member for Elementis Specialties, Netherlands BV. Before joining Elementis, Rob served in a variety of HR leadership roles for Royal DSM North America, Evonik Industries and Johnson & Johnson.

Rob was also a member of the Middlesex County (NJ) Office of Emergency Management for over 30 years where he served in a variety of Planning and Emergency Response roles and bureaus. His last roles were as Chief - Public Information Bureau and as a Duty Officer.

He earned an MA in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a BA in Psychology from Connecticut College.

https://www.robsklans.com/