Welcome
What Defines Success?
Every day, people try to answer that question. At an individual, group or organization level, we all want to achieve success. No matter how you define that success, achieving it takes hard work and focus.
At Management Outsourcing, our mission is to make you successful. We know that organizations and the people that comprise them face barriers to success that require creative solutions for challenging times.
Our services and solutions have been designed to help you achieve success as you define it.
Recent News
“Non-Essential” Personnel
Some observations about continuing business operations during recent blizzards.
Monday, February 22, 2010
By John G. Stockman, CISA, PMP, CBCP, MSIS
It has been many months since I last felt compelled to write and post an article on this blog. Truly we are living in strange times and my experience has been no different. Work and life are competing for my attention now more than ever.
But, after the recent “double-blizzard” event here in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, I was so absolutely amazed by what I transpired, there was no way I could let the opportunity pass by to post my thoughts. This is the first of a series of articles detailing my observations of these weather events.
Sitting here today, almost two weeks after the second blizzard finally blew itself out of the mid-Atlantic states, Washington DC and the surrounding suburbs are still far from recovered. Suffice to say that while the roads are now mostly clear, the scale of economic, infrastructure and social destruction are only starting to emerge. The coming weeks will be filled with stories of physical damage to buildings, homes, parks and highways. I have been personally amazed by the number of destroyed trees and shrubs in Northern Virginia.
For the first part of February, the region was completely paralyzed by these storms. The Metro transit system (DC and suburbs subway) was down for days (not hours). Grocery stores are still trying to restock shelves that were literally stripped bare in the panic up to and between storms. School systems are still requesting that parents (yes, parents) grab snow shovels and come help clear sidewalks around schools because they still aren’t cleaned off. The list goes on. I arrived at the inescapable conclusion that this region is dangerously ill-prepared to anticipate and respond to disasters of this magnitude. But, that’s a topic for another article.
What was truly fascinating to me was the response friends, co-workers and businesses had during this storm. There was an almost neurotic compulsion by most people to try to get to work through more than 24 inches of snow. Even though elected and emergency officials begged people to stay off the roads unless travel was absolutely necessary, there were truly phenomenal numbers of people out during the height of these storms that were determined to get to work. During my conversations with them or watching them as they were interviewed, these people usually had no business being on the road. They ranged from baristas at Starbucks to the average office worker. Most said they had no choice because they would get fired if they didn’t show up for work. Worse, I was appalled by the number of companies that I polled that had neither “official” inclement weather policies nor a contingency for essential and non-essential personnel.
Let’s be clear. This was truly a disaster scenario. Thousands of homes were without power or heat. Emergency services were overburdened and there was not anything resembling a normal response time to a 911 call if necessary.
So, why were all of these people going work and literally endangering their lives?
The main reason seems to be the self-imposed concern over being classified as “non-essential personnel” Let’s face it, we all want to fell necessary and valued in our jobs, especially in these times of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. When I told people they were literally risking their lives even though they were “non-essential”, they responded by saying that was why they were going to work. They wanted to be able to say they were there while everyone else was afraid to come out. I even had one person say to me she didn’t want to be perceived as a “snow wimp” because that would weaken peoples’ perception of her as a leader.
Now, I could understand if it was 3, 4 or 5 inches of snow. But the region was buried by snow, in some cases, 30 inches coming down in 24 hours. I, personally, found this an amazing opportunity to observe and report on a disaster as it happened. I was both fascinated and horrified by the mentality of the average person in putting their personal insecurities ahead of the needs of the community and adding to the dangers for emergency response personnel.
So, let me summarize my thoughts by saying:
- Employers in the Washington D.C. metro region did a fair job of keeping their people safe. However, quite a number of them (malls, office, etc.) clearly did not have a plan in place to deal with this scenario.
- Employees, for the most part, used reasonable judgment in any decision to venture out of their homes under the weather conditions that endured for days. But, there was clearly a large contingent that did not see any reason to stay home.
In both instances, the results created a further danger to public safety and hampered the efforts of emergency response and government officials to clear the roads and handle true emergencies.
So what can be done?
- Companies in the region need to take this experience and use it as an opportunity to assess their organizations response to this weather-disaster, update their business continuity plans and spend time educating their employees that being “non-essential” personnel does not mean expendable.
- Every organization needs to have a better command and communication system set up to let their employees know when it is unnecessary to risk their lives to get to work and that being sensible doesn’t make them week.
- Individuals need to prepare themselves better for these types of events. We were told by our respective state leaderships to prepare to “shelter in place” for 3-4 days. Yet, there was near panic as groceries, firewood and gasoline disappeared. There is no better time than now to think about this experience and stock up on essential items for a 3-4 day survival period. These listed are readily available on the Internet.
To put it mildly, we were lucky this time. But, we need to do a much better job if we want to handle greater natural or man-made disasters without significant consequences to human life.
