May 15, 2010

Best Practices in HR

Crisis Preparedness Pays Off

At ComPsych, disaster-related services staff takes a holistic approach to pull counseling services and resources together, says Roxanne Szczypkowski, director of Work-Life Services for ComPsych, international provider of EAPs. “We have hundreds of staff members involved in crisis response, from counselors to crisis specialists and work-life experts.”

When the Haiti earthquake hit, ComPsych immediately created a Haiti Task Force to plan the services and resources that might be needed. “Calls came into our hotline right away from people trying to locate their loved ones,” she explains.   

“We fielded inquiries on U.S. citizens and Canadian citizens in Haiti as well,” Szczypkowski notes. In fact, she says that in Miami and New York City ComPsych’s staff worked with the communications hubs that were set up locally and brought in their own translators to communicate in Creole and French with Haitian employees and families. ComPsych also set up an online registry so that their client’s employees could type in names of families and friends to search for them, she explains.

The earthquake in Chile several weeks later prompted the organization of a Chile Task Force. The added challenge of that particular disaster was the threat of a tsunami hitting Hawaii. “We were able to provide information on evacuation routes to safer, higher ground, local civic defense contacts and other resources for employees or family members,” explains Szczypkowski.