The successful evacuation of companies’ employees and expatriate staff from the Lebanon has once again brought the role of the Human Resources department into sharp focus, underscoring the critical role within crisis management planning and emergency response that the function plays; Richard Culver, a senior director for security services with International SOS reports.
The litigation potential from failure to exercise a high level of duty of care in these circumstances is yet to be truly defined. Can a company afford to rely solely on home government efforts to evacuate their own nationals or should its risk management planning take care of the situation?
When tensions grow and have the potential to escalate into a full-scale military conflict, how do you secure the safety of your employees and their families? Apart from the challenge of extracting people to a place of safety, how and where do you get them to a central coordination or assembly point? What are the ‘safe’ routes out? How do you secure transportation, communications and other logistics? And how do you handle the potential medical complications such as sick children and traumatised parents?
International SOS was involved with the evacuation of members from the Lebanon from day one and, in fact, had its security specialists in Beirut from 14 July. They travelled overland from Damascus to Beirut to reconnoitre the safest route for a road-based evacuation, considering that many of the main highways had already been bombed.
Once in the Lebanese capital they identified three assembly areas where members could gather prior to evacuation. Accessible and strategic locations were chosen, giving easy access to the main highway and a clear view of the key routes in and out of the city. Transport options were identified and a full risk assessment of possible routes between Beirut and the Syrian border was conducted both in the lead up to and during the conduct of the evacuations. The evacuees were to be transported to Damascus and thence to worldwide destinations.
Finding temporary lodgings in Damascus was no easy task. The city had suddenly become home to an extra half a million people, but through our local partner we managed to find suitable accommodation. When the evacuees arrived they were very tired and emotional, and many had young children. So, a reception team of security, medical and administrative personnel was set up to do everything they could to reassure the evacuees and ensure they were made comfortable. Refreshments and food were provided, parents with children received extra care and support.
In all, 345 members were evacuated from the region, using four road convoys to Damascus and two air charter flights to Cyprus. International SOS aviation, security and logistics specialists coordinated the use of charter and commercial flights to repatriate clients. The evacuations were successful but only with the foresight, experience and exact planning of some 90 staff, on-the-ground and at the company’s alarm centres, who worked around the clock to make it happen.
Lebanon was a classic example of how a relatively stable security environment can change with unpredictable suddenness. Employers need to be in a position to respond rapidly and efficiently using all available resources to safeguard their employees. In addition, organisations require timely and comprehensive information and updates to make rapid but considered decisions in a crisis.
What can we learn from this type of event? I believe there are a number of lessons:
- Clearly the secret of good risk management lies in the ability to gather reliable and accurate information, to interpret it correctly and to provide reasoned analysis. Given that we cannot control the timing of crises, the ability to respond or gain information on weekends, public holidays and out of hours is essential. The importance of crisis management planning cannot be underestimated. One of the key outputs of such planning is the establishment of a crisis management team, which can immediately commit the necessary internal and external resources to deal with the situation at hand. HR plays a critical role in this team.
- Good communications, speed of deployment and financial resources are all key to the success of the crisis team.
- Clearly defined channels of communication between the company and its external resources must be established at an early stage. This is of particular importance during the early stages of a crisis when trying to trace and contact expatriate employees and business travellers.
- HR needs to have a clear understanding of what expectations employees have regarding corporate and travel risk management.
- HR needs to ensure that it has up-to-date contact details and a good understanding of all traveller and expatriate locations.
- HR needs to be able to identify additional (internal) manpower in order to enable effective crisis response.
- In times of crisis, many HR organisations have a well-defined Family Liaison Programme to support employees.
In terms of corporate planning, there needs to be:
- The establishment of the appropriate plans, combined with training and exercises to enable the capability within critical individuals and teams.
- Comprehensive communication before, during and after the crisis within, and if necessary, external to the communication.
- The Crisis Management Team (CMT) should be small enough to be effective, big enough to be representative, and senior enough to be decisive. External security providers may have representation.
- The Crisis Management Plan should cover assessing risks, verifying threat levels, filtering information, escalating and convening the CMT and selecting best courses of action. The plan should allow for monitoring the process and providing feedback after the threat has settled or all evacuees are out, and ensuring that ‘lessons learned’ are built into future iterations of the plan.
- Those involved in executing the plan should be trained and the plan itself tested to be sure that it offers a rapid, efficient and effective evacuation plan from the time of first notification until after arrival at the final destination.
- No theoretical plan survives contact with reality, so it has to be adaptable and flexible. Simplicity is key.
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