Battling the Fear Economy

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 2001 by Joe Hagan, Jillian Ambroz

More than a month since the horrific events of September 11, the aftershocks continue to roil the economy and fray the nerves of the workers who make it run. Here's how to balance the company's emotional welfare against the pressing need to avoid a bottom-line disaster.

Jim Dolan knows something about guiding a company through a horrible crisis. He's CEO of Dolan Media, the publisher of a chain of city business magazines and newspapers that includes The Journal Record, whose offices are just 160 feet from the Oklahoma City Federal Building that was blown up in 1995. Flying to Oklahoma City from Chicago hours after the bombing, he was on hand to see employees who had suffered broken limbs, flayed skin and the loss of eyes. He watched as the trauma haunted them for months afterward. Even now, six years later, he says, "The employee effect is still there. You would have thought they were in the World Trade Center on September 11. It brought all kinds of things back for these people."

Indeed, more than a month later--after the prayer vigils and the blood drives and the group counseling--reverberations of September's attack still resound through the country and echo through the magazine business. Terror, the response to terror and the unknowable consequences of both have left community and workplace in a state of anxiety, a tense and overwrought emotional condition in which an anthrax scare at National Enquirer publisher American Media transfixes and terrifies the country. And these feelings are unlikely to dissipate any time soon.

Executives and managers now face a dilemma. Telling employees who are still suffering from symptoms like irritability, lack of motivation and fear of traveling that it's time to buck up and get back to work may only bring absenteeism, plunging productivity and an exodus of talent. But the events since September 11 transformed a financial slump into a full-on recession, and management has to find a way to balance their softer concerns about their employees' welfare against the hard-edged necessity of fighting to avert bottom-line disaster.

To get some solid advice on how to cope in these topsy-turvy times, Folio: spoke with publishing executives, management consultants and workplace counselors. In this package you'll find hands-on budgeting advice from top executives throughout the industry, plus looks at how publishers are salvaging their trade shows, Arab-American magazines are faring in a climate of paranoia, and who is finding silver linings in this horrible fall.

In battling the fear economy, the first step is to understand that while you may be able to set aside your worries and concentrate on work, those in your employ might not. And for a short time, you need to accept this state of affairs. "You simply have to shelve any ideas of, 'Will this year beat last year?' or 'Will productivity go up?' or 'Can we do with IO fewer people this year?' advises Dolan. "You have to forget all that and deal with the human level of recovery and traumatic healing. You have to think of your employees above all else. If you don't, what happens is they simply quit. They can't deal with it."

Dolan says it took months for business to return to normal. "In corporate, we were always thinking about [financial comparisons to] last year," he admits. "Among the employees, it took six months. But it was gentle. We didn't push. After a couple of months, it got a little firmer. By the end of the year, we were the assholes from corporate again, and it was a fairly normal push."

NO MANUAL FOR THIS DISASTER

Bart Gardy, the director of clinical services at Corporate Counseling Associates, a private counseling firm in midtown Manhattan that has served as the Employee Assistance Program for a number of publishing companies, puts the objective succinctly: "The delicate balance for a manager is to be sensitive and supportive," he says, "and also to say that there are certain expectations that aren't negotiable."

It's easier said than done. Even Gardy admits there is no manual for the unique stress of these times. And, indeed, managers have reacted in many different ways, depending on their own personal experiences, their own office culture and their proximity to perceived danger. Some seem less affected, others deeply so. Pervasive among them has been a field general's attitude that being proactive and getting back to business is a patriotic duty "Sometimes its seems silly to work," admits Michael Wood, CEO of Hanley-Wood, LLC, "but on the other hand, we like the distraction and routine and we're professional people with responsibilities to shareholders and each other. We have jobs to do. And I tried to convince people to get back to work."

Dolan says the first thing he did to get his company back on its feet after the Oklahoma bombing was to draw up a new working plan for the future and share it with the staff "At some point the employees wanted a plan," he recalls, "like they want the security of working for a company that can bring predictability. Even though it's an illusion, they wanted it. We took the staff off-site and went through the whole business plan, and it helped. A third of the employees didn't understand the economic plan, but it was still a plan and it gave them comfort."