Emotional Terrors in the Workplace: Protecting Your Business Bottom Line - Emotional Continuity Management in the Workplace

HOW SOME ORGANIZATIONS HAVE APPROACHED CREATING SYSTEM-WIDE EMOTIONAL CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT

• Hired specialized professionals for training, put them on retainers for disasters, have their people get to know them in advance so they don't appear as outsiders when the chips are down.

• Hired a field- tested Disaster Emotional Continuity Management Coach to support and train managers to deal directly with the bridge between business and emotion.

• Hosted a Consultation using resource combinations from inside and outside the company and making links with top-end, credentialed professionals in their area.

• Assigned a person or team to provide ongoing training for staff, orient new employees , write policy, create education, and establish standardized expectations while learning how to recognize the early warning signs of emotional dysfunction and to track developing emotional tornadoes on the horizon.

• Provided high-end, quality traumatology or critical incident management training for all department managers.

System-Wide Emotional Continuity Management Should Begin to Address These Questions:

Use the following questions to create a presentation document before you approach your administration to establish buy-on. A proactive position for Emotional Continuity Management begins with data that supports your position. Start your buy-on discussion with hard data, facts, statistics, fiscal risk projections and historical relevance. Follow with human-compassion-centered data that is translated into value-added benefit for your company. Show how taking care of human emotions is a fiscally advantageous, bottom-line- valuable , stakeholder-loyalty and customer-value-added business decision.

• What are the predictable fiscal consequences of an emotional spin?

• Can your Emotional Continuity Management Team manage small and large emotions?

• Is everyone ready to manage the emotions of a disaster?

• If a small spin begins, who will stop it?

• Are employees able to help themselves enough to help others?

• Do you have enough tools to manage emotional situations?

• Have you drilled and rehearsed for emotional incidents, small to large?

• Does your company have special needs employees?

• Does you company have special equipment?

• Do your employees know what to expect in case of a disaster?

• Has your entire company developed system-wide intervention strategies?

• Does anyone on your team have any specialized Emotional Continuity Management training?

• If all top managers are gone can your line staff take over the peer responsibilities?

• How will your employees know when external help is required?

• Are your people willing to call in outsiders for emotional support?

• What resources are available to all employees?

• Do you have external consultants who include teams of debriefers and trauma experts who are familiar with your business?

• Will your experts and consultants come immediately if you call them?

• Are your managers, employees, or consultants field trained in real-time disasters?

• Do your external consultants understand your people, customers, and business mission?

• What are the predictable emotional outcomes from a disaster?

• What Emotional Continuity Management tools have employees rehearsed?

• Who is familiar with the Emotional Continuity Management tools and can use them under stressful conditions?

• Does your company have unique emotional needs?

• Are there Emotional Continuity Management tools in place that increase employee understanding about what humans are likely to do under a wide range of circumstances?

• Has your entire company been trained in system-wide intervention strategies and tools?

• Who in your company has extensive and advanced psychological trauma management training?

• What Emotional Continuity Management tools would serve a simple problem, a complicated issue, or a complex emergency?

• If managers are gone, who assumes the responsibility for Emotional Continuity Management?

• How do you know when external help is required?

• Are your people willing to call in outsiders?

• Are supportive resources ready and in place if something happened today?

• Do you have external consultants and trauma experts who are familiar with your employees, your customers, your business mission, and bottom line issues?

• Will your consultants come into your disaster zone immediately?

• Are your external consultants field-trained experts?

• Have you prepared a way to manage voluntary "helpers" who will show up to disasters?

• How will you protect yourself and your company from opportunists who show up without appropriate training and credentials when you are the most vulnerable?

Buy-On Procedures Should Begin to Address These Questions:

• How well does administration support the Emotional Continuity Management Plan?

• How completely has the Emotional Continuity Management Plan been incorporated into the Emergency Management Plan of the company?

• How well have other departments in the company been informed or notified about administrative buy-on?

• How well have other departments supported the Emotional Continuity Management Plan?

• How well supported is the need to practice and drill for emotional emergencies?

• How extensive are the opportunities to drill for emotional emergencies?

• How financially supported is the Emotional Continuity Management Plan?

• How supportive is the administration about providing opportunities for training employees in emotional management?

• How supportive is the administration about providing opportunities for training management?

• How supportive is the administration about creating cooperative partnerships with other emergency response agencies prior to a disaster or emotional event?

• How supportive is the administration about providing pamphlets, books, literature, posters , media education, and other hard-copy information on Emotional Continuity Management Planning?

• How well do personnel know what they should do in an emergency to caretake their emotions?

• How well prepared are you to manage extreme emotions in the workplace?

• How well prepared are you to manage emotions resulting from a catastrophic disaster?