Following a difficult, traumatic, or violent incident, there are a lot of challenges to work through. But when planning and thinking through how to handle these situations, we often focus almost wholly on the response and tend to ignore the short and long-term recovery challenges.

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk through their own experiences in the aftermath of major crisis situations. Topics discussed include grief counseling, post-traumatic stress, managing the press, post-disaster payroll policies, and more.

 

Episode Transcript

Jen:

I read this article where there was a grief counselor that was interviewed and taking specifically around the aftermath of a situation and how its managed and how its handled. This grief counselor actually would get called onsite for various different high-level incidents, much like the shooting in Florida, 9-11, things like that. The grief counselor would come onsite and they would help the people involved through the situation. We saw that at our previous employer where if there was a big incident that happened we would have counselors that were onsite.

 

Bryan:

It was part of our SOP really.

 

Jen:

Absolutely, and help out. I just thought this would be a great topic to talk about to kind of educate those around what it’s like to go through an aftermath. Bryan and I have both gone through many situations-

 

Bryan:

Numerous.

 

Jen:

Where we dealt with an aftermath of a traumatic incident so we thought it would be a good idea to talk about what that looks like.

 

Bryan:

For me it always … This kind of is just … This issue gets overlooked a lot, but because of what I’ve learned through my experience and our experiences together is that this always seems to be part of the right of boom process. When I talk about left of boom, right of boom, you’ve got the bad thing that happened, the boom, and there’s what you can do before that, the preparation and the training and the exercises and whatever, but then the bad thing happens, you respond to it and then part of your long-term recovery, which what we’re talking about here falls right on getting out of that immediate response stage, is how do you deal with the aftermath of the situation in terms of taking care of the team, taking care of the survivors or the victims and their families and the organization, how do you make sure that people are okay through this.

 

Jen:

Right, and like you said, this should actually be part of your crisis planning.

 

Bryan:

It should be.

 

Jen:

It should be part of the plan.

 

Bryan:

It needs to be one of the first things that you do once you’ve gotten to that immediate response and we’re sure that people are safe and the immediate danger has passed, is how do you start to help people with the immediate and long-term aftermath of the situation that has impacted them.

 

Jen:

Yeah, and understanding some of the things you can expect to see. Some individuals may need to take some time off. They might need to take some time away from where it happened before they can … Yeah.

 

Bryan:

If you’re a multi-facility company they may want to work at a different facility moving forward.

 

Jen:

Yeah. It might be temporary or that might be permanent, but you need to take that in consideration and underst...