Dale Pazdra, the HR director for Coral Springs, Florida, had just launched a month-long kindness challenge campaign for city employees that day when a few hours later he learned of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School next door in the city of Parkland, Workforce reports.
Some of the victims lived in Coral Springs. In addition to the 17 dead students and teachers, 17 suffered injuries from shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz. "The first thing you do is think about how you are going to help employees get through this," says Pazdra, who is charged with a department that oversees 1,000 full-time and part-time employees.
Pazdra's 12-member team quickly put support services in place. A day after the shooting many workers were visibly crying, he remembers. "Although none of our employees or their children lost their lives, many have children who were almost killed, lost friends or had to walk over wounded and dead children to get out of that building," Pazdra said.
"My daughter is homeschooled, but she dances with a number of kids and one of her friends from dance was killed. It was very hard."
Because the shooting didn't directly impact Coral Springs, Pazdra's team ended up referring people who sought out help to family support centers. It is crucial for HR professionals to fully understand their employee assistance program (EAP) services before a tragedy hits, says Karen Cierzan, vice president of behavioral clinical operations for health insurer Cigna. Cigna provides EAP services for Coral Springs workers.
An employee assistance program strategy for mass tragedies requires quick dissemination of information to a large number of employees that includes "counseling services, coping strategies, and how to recognize reactions in yourself, your co-workers and families," Cierzan said.
"From an HR professional's standpoint, what really touched me was the outpouring of support," Pazdra said. "Every vendor, insurance carrier and benefits consultant within 48 hours offered us whatever they could."
Ensuring coordinated communications also was important to keep traumatized employees informed, while not bombarding them with too much information as they coped. Employees and families received information from a website, phone hotline and emails.
"We communicated at high levels to ensure we were acting in the right time frame, not duplicating efforts and staying focused on matters on which we could have an impact," Pazdra noted.
His team has stayed focused on post-traumatic stress disorder and has expanded its peer counseling programs. After the shooting, they also afforded workers greater flexibility to take time off to be with their children.
"HR has a special role to play in helping employees adjust in healthy ways after stressful or traumatic incidents and communication is key," Cigna's Cierzan said. "Engaging directly with employees by walking around and speaking with them helps HR professionals better understand employee concerns and how to help."
In Oakland County, Michigan, employees of Clarkston Community School this month started training on how to stop bleeding from injuries, the Oakland Press News reports.
The training is part of a trend that has seen 125,000 teachers, counselors and administrators in the nation over the last five years learn how to stop blood loss. And with that training, more schools are providing classrooms with lightweight tourniquets, gauze coated with drugs designed to stop bleeding and compression bandages.
"It's tough to think about the circumstance that would make this training necessary, but we wanted to give our staff every tool possible to enhance safety in our district," says John Lucido, executive director of HR for Clarkston.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, a so-called "Stop the Bleed" initiative was started by Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, who treated the victims from that mass shooting. The shooter in that incident killed 26 children and adults.
"I've been a trauma surgeon for over 40 years and have seen a lot of gunshot wounds," Jacobs said. But elementary school victims are "entirely different," he added. "These are 6-year-olds with wounds from very high-powered weaponry, and it changes you," Jacobs said.
Jacobs joined with other surgeons to grow the program, which is now available in all 50 states. More victims from these shootings could have been saved by just slowing down the bleeding.
"It takes a long time, longer than it takes to bleed to death, to clear the classroom, secure it and make sure there's not another shooter," Jacobs said. "The person who is going to save you is the person right beside you."