During a crisis, such as the 2025 California wildfires, employees may face significant personal and emotional challenges, even if business operations remain uninterrupted. As an IT manager, your role is not only to ensure operational efficiency and continuity but also to foster a supportive environment for employees navigating personal crises while managing their work responsibilities.

Organizations have a duty to ensure the health and safety of their employees, and this responsibility becomes even more critical during crises. Taking actionable steps to support employees both personally and professionally is essential, though it can be challenging. Employees directly affected by the crises may struggle to balance work with personal recovery efforts. Additionally, those not directly impacted may still require support as they cope with feelings of guilt, helplessness, or the need to assist family and friends. It’s important to remember that you, as a manager, may also be affected by the crisis. Seek assistance and build a support system for yourself to handle both your personal challenges and the emotional burden of supporting your team.

Many organizations have robust continuity and emergency response plans, but these often lack guidance for managers on how to support employees empathetically during a crisis. Crisis management plans often focus on internal operations and maintaining business continuity, rather than on providing empathetic support to employees. Empathetic leadership is crucial for business continuity but is often overlooked in planning and training. Employee safety and wellbeing must be prioritized during crisis management.

If your employees are impacted by a crisis, refer to your business continuity plan, crisis management committee, or emergency response plans, and follow directions from your human resources department. If these resources are not available, you can still take steps to support your employees. This guide provides actionable steps for managers to support employees effectively during challenging times, focusing on three critical areas: employee safety, wellbeing, and communication.

Employee Safety

Ensuring access to emergency resources, such as mental health support, flexible work arrangements, and crisis management services, can provide employees with the necessary support during times of need.

1. Encourage prioritization of personal safety:
   • Reiterate that employees should focus on their and their families’ safety above work obligations.
   • Provide guidance on available local resources for evacuation, shelter, and crisis assistance.
2. Flexible work arrangements:
   • Offer remote work options for employees who need to relocate or stay in safer areas.
   • Allow schedule flexibility to accommodate personal responsibilities during the crisis.
   • Offer additional paid leave options for employees needing to manage personal safety concerns.
3. Technical support for safe work locations:
   • Provide affected employees with the necessary equipment to work safely (e.g. mobile hotspots, portable chargers, and remote access tools).
   • Expedite technical support for employees experiencing connectivity or hardware issues.
4. Emergency resource sharing:
   • Distribute up-to-date information on emergency services and government advisories.

For more guidance, see:

• Flexible Work Options Catalog
• Emergency Remote Work Policy

Employee Wellbeing

First and foremost be aware that everyone will react differently to crises, and it’s natural for some people to have strong reactions. As a manager you can be a conduit to connect your employees with the support, information, and resources they need and have available to them, including organizational, government, and community programs.

1. Mental and emotional health support:
   • Share resources provided by the organization for mental health counselling (e.g. employee assistance program).
   • Offer to check in regularly to see how the employee is doing.
   • Take stock of your own mental wellbeing before going into difficult conversations and understand how this could impact communications.
2. Promote balance and recovery:
   • Encourage employees to take breaks and provide additional breaks to help employees avoid burnout.
   • Provide options for compassionate leave or reduced workloads.
3. Recognition and morale support:
   • Acknowledge the employee’s efforts during challenging times.
   • Foster connection with a peer support system such as an informal team check-in or virtual coffee. Create a “buddy system” where paired employees do mutual check-ins and provide each other support.
   • Organize a community event to help – blood drive, clothing drive, etc. – those unaffected might feel helpless and creating a way for people to contribute can help them feel better.
     

For more guidance, see:

• Ten Ways to Connect With Your Employees
• What to Do About Employee Wellbeing During a Crisis

Employee Communication

Maintain empathetic, transparent communication and provide clear support channels. Crisis situations can change by the minute, so lean on corporate communication guidelines to ensure your communications align with the organization and cascade down any pertinent information to your employees. Be available.

1. Empathetic and transparent messaging:
   • Acknowledge the crisis and its potential impact on employees.
   • Use compassionate language like, “Your safety and wellbeing are our top priorities.”
   • Avoid statements like, “I know how you feel” or “Everything will be all right.” Statements like these can make people feel like they are not understood or validated.
   • Allow employees to express reactions they have about the situation.
   • Answer questions to the best of your ability. But know that nobody will have all the answers.
   • Be willing to say nothing. Sometimes the most supportive thing you can do to help is simply be there for the other person.
   • Prepare for difficult conversations with employees by adequately preparing key information and taking a trauma-informed and empathetic approach.
2. Establish clear communication channels:
   • Create decision trees for critical communication channels to clarify how employees will be contacted and remain connected (including how to connect to the service desk).
   • Set up a dedicated channel for crisis updates and support for your employees, such as a Teams channel or Slack group.
   • Be easily accessible and available to employees for one-on-one conversations.
   • Distribute remote work assignment logs to employees.
   • Ensure all employees are aware of any changes in the chain of command.
3. Regular updates:
   • Provide consistent updates about company policies, available resources, and safety advisories.
   • Continue to reassure employees that flexibility and understanding are available.
   • Establish an accessible FAQ document and site with regular updates. Include relevant information from HR and your BCP team.
   • Determine a daily or weekly check-in schedule for employees.
   • Publish wikis for employees to troubleshoot immediately crucial problems (network, hardware, and so on) at home.

For more guidance, see Leadership Crisis Communication Guide Template.

Prepare for a Future Crisis

Even though you’re an IT manager, crisis planning involves more than technology. Be prepared when crisis strikes again to address employee concerns, absences, temporary work arrangements and process changes, health and safety, and other downstream effects of a crisis. It can be difficult to work through a crisis, so plan to be prepared. Equip managers and employees with the necessary information and guidance to navigate challenging times.

Ensure your business continuity plan includes people management:

• Conduct training and promote awareness.
• Gather feedback from employees following a crisis to identify areas for improvement.
• Review policies related to health & safety and flexible work to ensure they address emergencies.
• Build an employee emergency resources page.

Plan to communicate: Providing managers and employees with a standardized plan for executing communications internally creates organized steps and resources. Document the overall goal of communications and key messages that need to be relayed to all target audiences.

For more guidance, see:

• Standard Internal Communications Plan
• Crisis Communication Guides

Plan to support flexible work: Working from home or the office may not be an option, and IT needs to be able to support hundreds or thousands of remote workers, including their own teams. Equip managers and employees with information and guidance to set them up for success and address key implementation issues and cultural barriers.

For more guidance, see Develop a Targeted Flexible Work Program for IT.

Enable the organization to manage the pace of change and complexity associated with crises: Change may be complex but change management doesn't have to be. Simplify complex changes associated with the crisis and business continuity plans by breaking them down into manageable milestones.

For more guidance, see Lead Staff Through Change.

Don’t forget employee experience: In times of uncertainty, IT managers play a more important role than ever in employee experience. Sharing the rationale of decisions made, especially senior leader decisions, will be key. Leverage the McLean & Company 3i model – Inform, Interact, Involve – to maintain and improve engagement.

For more guidance, see 3i’s of Engaging Management – Manager Guide.

Key takeaways:

1. Employee Safety: It’s essential to prioritize health and safety. Ensure access to emergency resources, encourage prioritization of personal safety, and provide flexible work arrangements.
2. Employee Wellbeing: As a manager, be aware that everyone reacts differently to crises. Connect employees with mental health resources and take action to support balance and recovery like taking breaks.
3. Communications: Be consistent, credible, and compassionate in your communications with employees. Maintain empathy, don’t feel like you must have all the answers, and remember that simply supportively listening is appropriate too.
4. Don’t Leave Yourself Out: Take care of yourself, to take care of others. Understand how this crisis is impacting you; ensure you’re communicating what you need and your own boundaries. Build a support community for yourself to help carry the emotional burden of the crisis.
5. Plan for Future Crises: It’s not unlikely that you will have to deal with crises multiple times in your career. The best approach to a crisis is to plan and be prepared.