The Human Face of a Crisis – Some Lessons from Beaconsfield

Imagine for a moment you’re a senior manager at a mine and you’ve just plunged into crisis -- three of your men are trapped underground feared dead. As the crisis mounts by the second you suddenly learn that the families of all three miners have now been informed by a “caring” fellow employee that their father, husband or son is dead. You’ve not even had the time to think!

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Such crazy things happen in crises. People react in unpredictable ways. According to Dr. Robert Long[1] there are a vast number of human responses to tragedy, and hardly any of them conventional. In his Beaconsfield mine disaster presentation (by the same name as the title above) Dr. Long takes people through a see-sawing ride of emotional ecstasy and despair, and what residents of the little mining town and others experienced.

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These are some of the key learnings from the presentation:

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Managing Crises Systematically

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- The scale of crises can easily push the event well beyond the reasonable control of one single company in a very short time. Try a small town of a few hundred people coping with an influx of 360 media parties -- and that’s not considering the plethora of specialists and other agencies;

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- For around-the-clock operations there needs to be put in place a screening process to ensure employee/contractor fitness for work, particularly relating to emotionally-charged events. (Lack of sleep was a major issue at Beaconsfield with helicopters hovering over rescue workers’ caravan accommodation onsite.);

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- There was the ‘tyranny of distance’ involved in ensuring accurate communication between the surface and underground -- it meant that trust was critical -- the expected changes in locus of control occurred. It’s not the ideal situation;

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- Organisational leaders must be mature enough to co-opt and receive support and not let jealousy or power hinder their focus and role;

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- Each procedure that was used in the rescue was first planned, then practised and simulated – only when it was proven to be safe was it executed;

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- Media awareness training is strongly recommended.

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Community Reactions to Crisis

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Dr. Long explained that he observed a four-fold process in the community’s reactions to the rockfall event.

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1. Community disturbance: the shock waves produce the predicted polarisation of groups; differences are noted immediately and conflict develops quickly.

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2. Pressure brings people together: the ‘siloing’ breaks down and groups and individuals begin to work interdependently because they have to to get their work done. Some real team work is noted.

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3. Community ‘piercing’ and fragmentation: pressure brings release and the media pounce on it -- hungry as they are for their story.

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4. Community healing and moving on: this is the protracted period of time from when the media leave until the present day. Pastoral care individuals and teams who work behind the scenes, as well as friends and family, facilitate the process.

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The People Element…

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- Very few people in organisations are truly prepared for the emotional roller coaster this sort of event brings. Companies would do well to prepare all stakeholders for the emotional impacts associated with crisis events;

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- Juggling the euphoria of family and friends of those found alive with the pain of grief in those who’ve lost a loved one is complex and demanding; respect the integrity of all people. Speak in ways to manage the situation sensitively;

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- The most useful people intentionally stay out of the limelight;

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- The press media make the most of every errant word. Highly speculative messages of half-truth are spoken in the heat of the moment and are reported. These do much damage to the cause of managing the crisis. It takes a lot of work and effort to reclaim lost territory;

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- There needs to be systems in place to sensitively manage the ebbing and flowing emotions of staff and others as moment-by-moment events escalate or relax the situation;

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- Everyone’s an expert all of a sudden. Offers of (well meaning but disruptive) help pour in and there’s no resources to even field the offers;

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- There’s a battle of personalities from the person who wants to ‘just get ‘em out’ to those patient enough to actually do the job properly -- strong leadership is required;

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- Each person (every one) needs to be recognised for their special role. There can be no exception as recognition will not only earn those managing the crisis much more bite in the overall effort, and prevent unwanted backlash, it treats all people emotionally affected (and everyone is affected in this sort of crisis) with dignity and respect;

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- “Support, understanding and recognition” -- these are three overarching catch-words from the presentation;

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Overall, this sort of crisis is about community. The community inherits the past, present and future -- when all the press media are long gone, the community still carries the burden of tragedy.

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The community cares for itself to a large extent. There were many clinical psychologists involved in the recovery phase of the event; 97 percent of the real pastoral care, however, came from friends and family, and community pastoral carers whether formally trained or not.

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It was said that the Coroner was not interested in the policies and procedures in paper form; he wanted to know ‘what actually was.’ This should be enough to motivate any company to ensure the gap between what we say we do versus what we actually do is as small as possible.

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A key underlying message was, you get much more real work done actually avoiding the keen focus of camera and reporter. The quiet achiever is more valuable than gold in dealing with crisis.

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[1] Dr. Robert Long is the director of Human Dymensions Pty Ltd. He had been working with the management of the Beaconsfield mine prior to the tragic rockfall of 25 April 2006 and remarked how well prepared and how well performed seven of Beaconsfield’s managers were. His website is: http://humandymensions.com/