Almost 15 people die at work every day. Three of them are in the construction industry.¹ Sadly, since this article first appeared in 2009, the year-end numbers have remained virtually unchanged. Construction’s increasing complexity demands that construction leaders (including CFMs) deploy new risk management strategies and tactics. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, unanticipated emergencies and disasters occur daily in our industry.

A new trend has also emerged: 2019 marked the seventh consecutive year of unintentional overdoses due to nonmedical use of drugs or alcohol in the workplace in all industries (not exclusive to the construction industry).² This is similar for the 307 suicides that occurred in all workplaces.³

Construction risk management is a specialized body of knowledge, techniques, tools, and resources focused on the identification, planning, and implementation of controls to prevent unanticipated events from happening in the first place; or to prevent the total disruption of a contractor’s operations should such an event occur.

In addition to their human toll, organizational crises are disruptive to both corporate business and project operations. Productivity, quality, risk, safety, profitability, and other key performance measures are adversely affected by such events.

That is why risk management can be further defined as: “The conservation of an organization’s human and financial resources.”

A Crisis Defined

A crisis is the turning point in an unanticipated event – the point at which the outcome of an emergency or disaster turns either better or worse. Remember that during a crisis, it’s more likely to be “business as unusual” rather than “business as usual.”

Whereas risk management is traditionally a proactive discipline, crisis management is reactive. Crisis management can be viewed as a specialized discipline within risk management, where specific practices are instituted in response to unanticipated events that threaten a company’s stability. Having an effective plan and resources in place mitigates the destructive nature of that reactivity.

Crisis management is one of several interrelated core disciplines comprising enterprise risk management, along with emergency preparedness, disaster response, business continuity planning, supply chain risk mitigation, and cyber liability prevention. Crisis management practices can help lessen the magnitude of emergencies and disasters, while decreasing the uncertainty and anxiety associated with these events.

The Impact of a Workplace Tragedy

Every day, construction workers leave home for work unaware that their next shift may involve a traumatic event, perhaps with life and death consequences. Such tragedies affect employee and staff health, safety, wellbeing, and morale.

Here are some representative workplace crises that can cause emotional trauma:

• Workplace fatalities
• Multiple-injury accidents
• Tragic injuries with graphic wounds or agonizing pain and suffering, where survivors are shocked, stressed, or traumatized by what they witnessed
• “Near death” incidents (such as structural collapses, explosions, employees suspended from fall arrest systems, excavation cave-ins, and confined space entry rescues)
• Crashes that result in injuries or fatalities
• Workplace violence (which could be among coworkers or a case of domestic abuse spilling over into the workplace)⁴
• Suicide of an employee or their family member, an employee of a subcontractor, or other business partner⁵

Employees can also be adversely affected by other tragedies, such as the loss of a coworker due to a heart attack or other natural causes. Another example is coping with the loss of a coworker’s loved one. In fact, many crisis management professionals report that one of the hardest experiences for employees to endure is the loss of a coworker’s child.

Human & Organizational Consequences of a Workplace Crisis

In the midst of a traumatic event, construction leaders face not only the obvious human loss, but also increased exposure to significant financial loss. Exhibit 1 summarizes some potential human and financial consequences of a workplace crisis.

Following a catastrophe, an “us vs. them” mindset is a common dynamic within work groups. The company (or boss) is often blamed for problems related (and unrelated) to the tragic event.

Workplace tragedies can create pivotal turning points for companies and work teams. Some construction leaders relate how traumatic events have actually launched a new sense of loyalty, team cohesion, and commitment to safe work practices in their companies. Others bemoan a catastrophe that produced increased conflict, distrust of leadership, and a collective negative image.

The bottom line: Depending on your company’s response, you and other leaders will either create a sense of “We will never let that happen again,” or “This company will never be the same again.”

Human Reactions to a Crisis

In a time of tragedy, the affected workers may be grateful for their own physical safety; however, the psychological outcomes of such events can be extremely difficult for the work group as a whole. Workers do not need to be injured physically to be injured psychologically.

When impacted by tragedy, most people experience a flood of biological and neurological changes that overwhelm their normal coping mechanisms. A very predictable set of physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral reactions result.

Although many of these reactions have survival value during a crisis (like a soldier with heightened vigilance in a combat zone), they can also severely impair normal work and life productivity. Judgments about safety, attention to quality, and the ability to meet crucial deadlines are all in jeopardy.

So, in the midst of addressing various technological, operational, and logistical issues in the aftermath of a tragedy, it is also advisable to pay special attention to the human needs of your affected employees during and after a crisis.

The Human Element

To illustrate the importance of the human element, let’s review how people usually behave when traumatized.

1)   We regress to more basic, primitive impulses and defenses.

• The brain is recircuited to focus on creating an immediate sense of safety. However, these new thought patterns are not necessarily logical, since the portions of the brain dealing with advanced abstract thought are “put on hold.”
• Decisions tend to be impulsive, extreme, and emotional (rather than logical).
• Emotional responses are magnified and self-protective.

2)   We immediately attempt to make sense of the incident in an effort to gain a feeling of control over it.

• We need to create an answer to the “why” of what happened, even when one isn’t readily available.
• We believe that if we can just understand the incident, then we can prevent its reoccurrence.
• Our understanding of the incident is likely to be reactive and lack objectivity.

3)   We isolate from others.

• The lack of control experienced in tragedy leads people to pull away from others in distrust.

Add these factors together and conditions are ripe for hostility and blame directed toward the most convenient targets – the company’s leadership. Following a tragedy, the allegations of blame need not be accurate in order to be destructive to specific work groups and the company as a whole.