The Immediate Response to Friday’s Earthquake: What HR Leaders in Japan Can Teach the World about 'Workforce Contingency Planning'

Being closely connected to the most senior HR practitioners at multinationals in Japan, we were in a unique position to assess the immediate reaction of Japan’s HR Leaders to the earthquake and tsunami along Japan’s north-eastern seaboard on Friday 12th March. Writing from the safety of Singapore, we were in touch with some 400 Japan HR Leaders over email until the early hours of Saturday 13th March to assess the immediate impact of the disaster on the workforce of the world’s multinational organisations based in Japan.

We’ve read a lot of news reports about the unfolding situation, but we don’t often hear the Human Resources angle behind these events. Here is a special report for HR Leaders across Asia and the globe on how HR teams in Japan responded to the unfolding situation.

1) Background: The Physical Impact

When we first began receiving replies to our messages, it was very clear that most companies based in the Eastern side of Japan had been directly affected. The companies worst affected were in the manufacturing industries (which may have had factories located directly in the disaster area) and consumer/retail organisations that had a dispersed network of stores or sales representatives across the country, including the north-east.

90% of the world’s multinationals base their Japan headquarters in Tokyo or in the wider Kanto region, so most were spared the direct impact of the quake, suffering only damage to the interiors of their offices. The biggest impact to these companies came in the aftermath of the quake, where high-rise buildings swayed heavily for over thirty minutes following each aftershock. With elevator power switched off, many were trapped in high rise buildings for several hours, and others were similarly trapped underground in the city’s expansive metro network. With the city’s transport infrastructure totally shut down for the rest of the day, many HR Leaders (we crudely estimate around 50%) stayed at their office overnight with those who could not return home. The lucky ones could walk home, however we were still receiving messages at 3am local time from people who had walked six hours to reach their houses in the outlying suburbs of Tokyo.

2) Background: The Personal Impact

The personal impact on HR Leaders was palpable through the messages that we were receiving throughout the evening and night. Even in normal circumstances, senior HR can be a lonely profession because of the need to often keep strict confidences between parties within the same organisation. However it became lonelier still when HR Leaders became directly responsible for reporting on the safety of all their company’s employees. Many were happy to take the chance to express their own personal anxieties during the harrowing hours of Friday night, allowing them to continue to keep outwardly focused and professional in their efforts to account for employees and their families.

3) Early Lessons for HR: ‘Workforce Contingency Planning’

It is often said that Japan is the most disaster-conscious nation in the world, and despite the horrific scenes that are still emerging from the disaster zone today, Friday evening was another reminder of this theory. In most companies, offices were already pre-stocked with emergency rations and equipment, and HR team members already had well-defined roles that they needed to play in such circumstances. Even those multinational organisations with comparatively smaller employee populations on the ground in Japan were able to adopt emergency measures quickly and effectively.

Contingency planning’ is a phrase that’s often used in other business spheres, including supply chain organisations in manufacturing industries or risk management departments in the financial services industries. However most companies need to think harder about the contingency measures needed for their own employees. This is becoming increasingly important as populations around the world converge in large cities and can be more prone to the effects of natural disasters. Moreover, other examples such as the recent political instability in the Middle East, or increasing water and food shortages in hot-spots around the globe are showing that unpredictable emergencies can come in many forms.

We believe that Workforce Contingency Planning will become increasingly important to the Human Resources field, not just to ensure business continuity within multinational organisations, but also in offering more employee engagement in the form of extra peace of mind to the workforce.

4) Conclusion: A Possible Future in Regional People Contingency Planning?

One question that everyone should be asking themselves is: What would have happened if the epicentre of the earthquake had struck Tokyo itself? Sadly most of the contingency planning measures put into effect so successfully in Japan on Friday were reliant on a fully functioning headquarter operations in Tokyo. Indeed, many organisations with only a very small representation in Japan and no HR support on the ground found themselves relatively helpless to contact their company’s employees on Friday and ensure their safety.

With the improvement of cross-border communications, we hope that more companies will think about regional contingency measures, so that regional and global HR teams can have the option to do the most for their employees’ well-being from the secure distance of their regional headquarters.

Our thoughts go out to everyone whose families have been affected by the disaster.