Page 161 - Anne Bruce - Building A HIgh Morale Workplace (2002)

Winning Back Morale in Emotional Times 141

Six Tips for Guiding Employees Back to Work
1. Discuss openly security concerns that your employees
may be harboring and address them head on.
2. Ask your employees what kinds of information would make them
feel more at ease—and then deliver it.
3. Stress the “new normal” way of doing things, acknowledging your
understanding that things will never be the same again.
4. Create a “Remembrance Committee” for selecting various ways to
structure benevolent involvement, like remembering anniversaries
and reaching out to families.
5. Recognize employees who have gone the extra mile and have
extended extra effort during times of crisis. Publicly acknowledge
out-of-the-ordinary efforts.
6. Keep a healthy balance of work and remembering. It’s a fragile time.
You don’t want to dwell on the negative, but you should encourage
employees to remember what happened and balance that time with
building back a strong and healthy, high morale workplace.

have learned to depend on again and again.
In incidents ranging from bank robberies and hurricanes to

airplane crashes and workplace killings, crisis debriefing is seen
as a way to show an organization’s compassion. Crisis debrief-
ing can bring order out of chaos by blending therapeutic coun-
seling with consulting. Although this process can be therapeutic,

it’s important to point out
that it’s not therapy. Crisis Crisis debriefing A “psy-
debriefing focuses more on chological first-aid kit” of
the here and now and how emergency counseling
to move forward and live designed to help people understand
and cope with their reactions to trau-
and work productively and
matic events.
happily once again.

Be Ready to Mobilize All Resources

It’s hard to imagine something terrible happening to those we
work with and care about. But suppose you had the power to

foresee the services and support that would be available to you
and your workers? Wouldn’t you feel better prepared to handle a