Homeland Security & Emergency Management 2015; 12(1): 145–168
Stacey Cole Mann* and Tanveer Islam
The Roles and Involvement of Local
Government Human Resource Professionals
in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning
Abstract: Across the US, coastal cities are threatened by many different man-
made and natural hazards. From oil spill to hurricanes, tsunamis or coastal
flooding, these cities should be prepared for emergency situations and should
have well-organized emergency plans for their citizens. As a department that has
contact with local government employees, human resource (HR) professionals
understand the concepts that are important in times of crisis, including benefits
management, training and development, and compensation. From mitigation to
recovery, employees are vital to planning and responding to an emergency, and in
a time when local government is focused on serving its citizens, local government
human resource professionals serve those protecting those citizens – local gov-
ernment employees. The objective of this paper is to assess the roles and involve-
ment of local government human resource professionals in emergency planning
in coastal cities nationwide. Using responses collected from HR professionals
in coastal cities with populations of 50,000 – 249,999, this paper investigates
common HR issues included in emergency plans. Based on the analysis of their
responses, gaps are identified and recommendations are made of ways in which
human resources can contribute more effectively towards emergency planning
for coastal cities.
Keywords: emergency management; emergency planning; emergency pre-
paredness; human resource management; intergovernmental relations; local
government.
DOI 10.1515/jhsem-2013-0087
*Corresponding author: Stacey Cole Mann, Emergency Management, Jacksonville State
University, 700 Pelham Road North, Jacksonville, AL 36265-1602, USA,
Tel.: +256-782-5925, e-mail: scmann@jsu.edu
Tanveer Islam: Emergency Management, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, AL, USA
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146 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
1 Introduction
In the last 10–15 years, coastal areas of the US have undergone dramatic popula-
tion increases. The migration to coastal areas has greatly affected other areas of
the US, such as the Great Plains, which is categorized as the fifth largest land
area, but has only 4% of the American population (Lind 2003). In fact, in its State
of the Coast report, NOAA (2011) reported that “52% of the nation’s total popu-
lation lived in coastal watershed counties in 2010” and from 1970 to 2010, the
population of these counties increased by 45% (NOAA 2011, Communities), and
are expecting an increase of 14.9 million residents by 2020 (NOAA 2011).
Like other parts of the US, coastal communities face a variety of hazards.
However, because of the exponential growth in population, the numbers and
types of risks in these areas also are increasing, which may result in disaster if
significant planning has not occurred. Local governments face several significant
problems with emergency planning including lack of resources such as money
and staff, complacency among citizens about preparedness, and politicians who
focus on short-term projects that reflect well when re-election is pending (Mann
2011). Thus, local governments, especially those that face increased vulnerabili-
ties such as those in coastal areas, must include as many departmental employees
in emergency planning as possible. Some departments, such as transportation,
public works, and human services, are required to participate in local govern-
ment emergency planning because they are categorized by the federal govern-
ment as emergency support functions, or functions that are pertinent to disaster
response (FEMA 2013).
However, one department that would provide added insight to the planning
process, but is often overlooked is human resources. Human resource profession-
als are responsible for addressing the issues that affect the most important assets
in local government, the employees. In times of disaster, like citizens, employees’
lives also are affected. By including HR professionals in emergency planning, local
governments can identify procedures and policies that are pertinent to employee
management in times of crisis. If employees understand the policies and proce-
dures as well as their specific roles and responsibilities in disaster response and
recovery, the stress that often accompanies a disaster may be lessened, especially
for those facing the crisis both in the workplace and at home. In the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, Goodman and Mann (2008) found that most employees along
the Mississippi Gulf Coast were unclear about their post-disaster responsibilities
at work, which may have heightened the stress in their personal lives.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of human resource profes-
sionals in local government emergency planning in coastal cities. Because of the
population migration toward these areas, local governments must ensure that all
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 147
of their resources are used effectively during times of crisis. The authors will first
provide a discussion of coastal cities and the types of vulnerabilities these regions
face, which will be followed by a general discussion of emergency planning in
state and local governments. The discussion will then focus on HR profession-
als as emergency planning partners. The results of a survey of local government
human resource professionals conducted by Mann (2011) will be used to analyze
the involvement of HR professionals in coastal and non-coastal cities, and finally,
suggestions of HR practices that should be included in emergency plans will be
identified.
2 Coastal Cities and Vulnerabilities
Coastal living, for the most part, is very appealing for many Americans. The
Gulf Coast region offers sandy, white beaches and moderate temperatures in the
winter. The West Coast offers majestic scenery and the stunning, blue Pacific. The
East Coast offers the appeal of major fisheries and nice, warm summers. However,
although coastal living has many benefits, residents face numerous risks and vul-
nerabilities, whose effects can be unforgiving and cruel.
Clark et al. (1998) define vulnerability as “people’s differential incapacity to
deal with hazards, based on the position of groups and individuals within both
the physical and social worlds” (p. 59). In a 1998 study, the authors examined
several factors as determinants of vulnerability, which included “age, disabili-
ties, family structure and social networks, housing and the built environment,
income and material resources, lifelines (including transportation, communica-
tion, utilities, and other services), occupation, and race and ethnicity” (Clark
et al. 1998: p. 67). McEntire (2001) also identified similar areas of vulnerabilities,
which include physical, social, cultural, political, economic, and technological
factors.
For coastal communities, these vulnerabilities are especially relevant, and
although each category is individually defined, they do not operate individually.
For instance, Clark et al. (1998) found that certain areas of Revere, Massachusetts
are more vulnerable than others when physical and social vulnerabilities, such
as race, age, education, and others, are combined. Frazier et al. (2010) found that
in Sarasota, Florida, “the addition of a sea-level-rise scenario to hurricane storm-
surge hazard zones often results in a doubling of population and asset exposure”
(p. 495). This is important to note, especially in terms of the built environment
because the “nature and age of the housing stock” (Cutter and Emrich 2006:
p. 104) could increase risk. In Florida, homes in the coastal regions are especially
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148 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
vulnerable as “78% of the houses, excluding mobile homes, were built before
1944 and 88% do not meet current building codes” (Repetto 2012: p. 2).
In Louisiana, New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward was one of the last areas of
development, which was “due to the swampy, flood prone nature of the area”
(Dessauer and Armstrong 2006: p. 4). This area also faced increased risk and vul-
nerability to flooding when it was divided by the construction of the industrial
canal in 1923. Finally, although this district had the largest number of homeown-
ers in Orleans Parish prior to Katrina, the houses were “in poor physical con-
dition” (Dessauer and Armstrong 2006: p. 4) because the level of poverty made
home maintenance difficult. These physical vulnerabilities as well as social and
economic vulnerabilities became especially apparent during the storm. Although
Norris-Raynbird (2005) argued that in recovery, the social elements affected by
disaster may “be more responsible for how a community recovers than physical
and technological elements” (p. 38–39), it may be that it is the socio-economic
characteristics that have the largest impact on individuals. In planning for crises,
all local governments must focus their planning efforts not only on the hazards
that affect their jurisdictions, but also the residents.
Because many coastal cities often rely on tourism dollars, economic vulner-
abilities are far-reaching in times of crisis. Not only do cities and states rely on the
income brought in by visitors, but also do individuals who work in the tourism
industry. In 2011, both domestic and international tourists spent over $807 billion
in the US, with $102.3 billion spent in California (Dean Runyan Associates 2012)
and $67.2 billion in Florida. The total sales tax revenue from tourism in Florida
reached $4.0 billion in 2011 (VISIT FLORIDA Research 2011), and according to the
not-for-profit tourism promotion company established by the Florida Legislature in
1996, Visit Florida, every 85 visitors to the state supports one Florida job (Office of
the Governor 2012). In California, total state tax dollars generated by tourism was
over $11 billion, and at the local level, approximately $2.3 billion, which is signifi-
cant revenue for some local governments. Although Florida’s tax revenue was sig-
nificantly lower, it seems that the total number of persons directly employed by the
tourism industry, 1,013,100 000 (VISIT FLORIDA Research 2011), is higher than in
California, which is estimated at 893,000 (Dean Runyan Associates 2011). Following
the 2004 hurricanes, Visit Florida estimated the potential losses to the state from
decreased tourism was approximately $160 million in tax revenues, and it was the
coastal areas, which makes up 80% of the personal income of residents in Florida
and 79% of the earnings for the state payroll, that helped Florida survive after the
economy took a downturn following 2001 terrorist attacks (Cantanese Center 2005).
Thus, in states like Florida and California who depend on tourism, when disaster
strikes, revenues are often impacted, meaning that state and local governments
must find creative, efficient, and effective methods for response and recovery.
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 149
While this discussion highlights only a few of the vulnerabilities faced by
coastal communities, clearly these areas of the nation have some considerations
in planning. Because local governments often do not have, or believe to have,
the resources needed for addressing hazards in their communities, many states
require action through legislation. According to Burby (2005), for many years,
researchers concluded that although some state governments mandate local gov-
ernments “to prepare plans and attend to hazards in plans, many local govern-
ments fail to plan, fail to update plans so that they are current, and fail to give
hazards adequate attention” (p. 68). The next section will offer a brief discussion
of some emergency planning mandates found throughout the nation.
2.1 State and Local Government Emergency Planning
Many states implement planning mandates to address hazards. As early as the
1970s, California, North Carolina, Oregon, Florida, Maine, Maryland, and South
Carolina began including preparedness elements for earthquakes (Burby 2005).
Several states with coastal communities have “stringent state oversight” regard-
ing their comprehensive plans and identification of natural hazards, some of
which include Oregon, Florida, North Carolina, and California. States with
weaker mandates included Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, South Carolina, and
Maryland (Burby 2005: p. 69). In addition, several states with coastal cities also
provide some level of financial or planning assistance.
As one of the nation’s leaders in emergency planning, Florida imposes hefty
fines and sanctions for local governments that do not implement planning man-
dates (Deyle and Smith 1998). The 1985 Local Government Comprehensive Plan-
ning Act requires that local governments in Florida address several important
areas in their plans, including intergovernmental coordination, conservation of
natural resources, and housing, among others. The Florida Department of Com-
munity Affairs (DCA) was given the task of overseeing the process and assisting
local governments with compliance. Although local governments did not fully
comply with every mandate, many met the DCA’s priorities, which led to nego-
tiation of compliance by allowing some “communities to exclude certain issues
from their plans where those issues were considered to be less crucial” (Deyle and
Smith 1998, conclusion section, ¶ 6).
Some states also have specific guidelines for coastal counties. For example,
in North Carolina, 20 coastal counties must create and approve a 10-year local
land use plan (Schwab 2011). In Alabama, local governments who potentially face
hurricanes are required to create a hurricane evacuation plan. In Virginia, local
governments are required to appoint a local hazardous materials coordinator,
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150 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
and for those local governments with populations of 50,000 or greater, an alert
plan for information dissemination must be implemented (Code of Virginia, §44-
146.38; Code of Virginia, §44-146.19).
In Oregon, natural hazards must be included in the land use portion of the
local emergency plan (Schwab 2011), and in Oregon, local governments must
follow specific guidelines to preserve ecosystems and ensure they are not altered
(Goal 17 1999). Finally, many of Oregon’s coastal counties lie in seismic regions,
and in 2001, the state passed Senate Bill 13, requiring both state and local agen-
cies in these zones and have 250 or more employees to “develop seismic prepa-
ration procedures and inform their employees about the procedures” (Douglas
County 2009: p. 12). The agencies also must conduct drills that follow state guide-
lines, for evacuation and protection in place (Douglas County 2009).
Because of the constant risk of earthquakes, California has required or
encouraged local governments to take protective measures. Following the 1971
San Fernando Earthquake, the state passed the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault-
ing Zone Act to limit development in areas that may face extensive surface fault
ruptures, which results “when movement on a fault deep below the earth breaks
through to the surface” (California Geological Survey 2012, “What is surface
rupture?”). In 1990, the Seismic Hazards Mapping Act was passed to address
other possible earthquake effects such as landslides and liquefaction (California
Geological Survey 2012). Although local governments must enforce established
development policies, they can choose to be more restrictive (Department of Con-
servation 2012). The city of Los Angeles, for example, instituted a grading system
that has reduced landslide damage by 90% (OAS 1991).
Other local governments also create their own mandates. For example, in
2004, the New York City Council adopted Local Law 26, which increased prepar-
edness efforts by requiring sprinkler systems in all buildings by 2019, photolu-
minescent markings on all exits by July 2006, and a battery or generator for all
exit signs. In addition, all new buildings are required to include impact-resistant
enclosures for stairs and elevators, an evacuation emergency action plan, and
additional specifics for smoke barriers and outdoor air intakes (NYC LL26 2006;
Weissman 2010).
The local government of Pensacola Beach, Florida, a small barrier island off
the coast of the Florida Panhandle, adopted a building code that forced homes
in A-Zones, which are not considered beachside, to be built at V-Zone stand-
ards, which are homes that often are pummeled by waves during a flood. This
more stringent code proved successful after the 1995 hurricane, Opal, flooded
the island, and V-Zone structures remained standing. Residents, also, benefitted
from this building code when the National Flood Insurance Program decreased
premiums (DeKorne 2004).
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 151
However, actions taken by states and local governments are not all required.
For example, Hurricane Katrina provided valuable lessons to the local and state
governments in Louisiana, and as a result, many policies regarding planning
were enacted. Because flooding is a major issue in New Orleans, the city wanted
to ensure that everyone could evacuate. As Hurricane Gustav approached Louisi-
ana in 2008, several new policies were exercised including transporting residents
to shelters, releasing evacuation information earlier, and announcing registra-
tion for special-needs patients (Parish getting ready 2008).
While the risks of coastal cities may vary, the goal of planning remains the
same. As the population increases, more resources to address the risks will be
needed. At the local government level, resources may sometimes be limited (Perry
and Mankin 2005; Caruson and MacManus 2011; Mann 2011). Therefore, identify-
ing all departments and their employees that can play a significant role in plan-
ning is a necessity.
2.2 HR Professionals as Emergency Planning Partners
As disasters become more frequent and more extensive, the development in haz-
ard-prone areas and disintegrating environmental barriers result in an increase
in recovery spending. Thus, local governments should identify all accessible
resources prior to a disaster. Human resource management departments play an
instrumental role in the daily functions of local government, and therefore, also
have significant roles in times of disaster. The functions that HR departments are
responsible for during normal operations also are important in times of crisis, if
not more so. According to Fegley and Victor (2005):
Identifying employee perceptions of disaster preparedness helps HR professionals better com-
prehend employee awareness and knowledge of their organizations’ plans. This information is
helpful to HR professionals in forming, revising and communicating their organizations’ disas-
ter preparedness plans. (v)
The authors concluded that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the effects of Hurricane
Katrina revealed that HR departments play an important role in disaster prepar-
edness, and that “whatever the extent of HR involvement in this process, there is
a need to continuously modify, evaluate and communicate disaster preparedness
plans” (Fegley and Victor 2005: p. 21).
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has investigated dis-
aster preparedness in various organizations nationwide. In 2005, approximately
314 HR professionals completed the survey, generating a 16% response rate, with
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152 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
80% of respondents employed in the private sector and 20% in the public sector.
Over 75% of respondents participated in some aspect of their organization’s
emergency planning, and the two functions that were most common included
“communicating plans and procedures to employees and communicating infor-
mation about available assistance programs:” (Fegley and Victor 2005: p. 4). The
report also revealed that over 30% had equal input in the planning process, 29%
advised the departments responsible for emergency planning, 18% were “primar-
ily responsible for forming all disaster preparedness plans and procedures”; and
finally, 22% did not participate in preparedness planning (7–8). Other important
findings included that many have plans for shelter-in-place, communication,
employee assistance, and response training for employees. In 2011, 10 years after
the 9/11 terrorist attacks, SHRM conducted a similar study and found that 76% of
respondents reported that their organizations had a formal disaster preparedness
plan, an increase from the 2001 findings.
In a nationwide survey of local government HR professionals in mid-size
cities, Mann (2011) found that approximately 65% regularly participate in emer-
gency planning meetings, but only about 25% reported being very involved with
emergency planning. Although most respondents reported some participation in
emergency planning with their local government, the study also reported that the
number of HR functions addressed in emergency plans was correlated with the
number of years the individual had worked in HR. In other words, the number
of HR-related issues addressed in emergency plans such as compensation and
hiring practices were greater in those cities where respondents had worked in HR
for more than 10 years. Along with the knowledge of HR practices, these respond-
ents also bring other valuable characteristics to emergency planning, including
the ability to handle conflict, experience with adapting to changing environ-
ments, and skills that lead to quick decision-making (Mann 2011). Also, HR pro-
fessionals have contact with employees and are knowledgeable about the human
capital available to the organization, giving them a unique ability to assist with
the identification of important resources that could be valuable in times of crisis.
At the federal level, FEMA’s Comprehensive Preparedness Guidelines (CPG)
(2009) serves as a guide for state and local governments in creating and updating
their emergency preparedness plans. While the guidelines address many areas
of planning, some aspects of personnel planning are included. For example, the
CPG suggests identifying “preparedness gaps in available personnel, equipment,
and training” as well as providing “training to their personnel that is relevant to
all-hazards training” (p. 26). Specifically, FEMA (2009) states: “Training helps
emergency personnel become familiar with their responsibilities and acquire
the skills necessary to perform assigned tasks” (p. 90). Training should also be
included that allows personnel the ability to understand how to organize and use
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 153
volunteers. However, the creation of plan is only the initial phase of prepared-
ness; the effect of specific hazards on “existing resources, equipment, training,
and personnel” must also be examined (p. 28).
In addition to guidelines offered by the federal government, some states have
also identified important human resources issues that are important in times of dis-
aster. As the nation’s most disaster-affected state, the Texas government has identi-
fied some aspects of human resource management that are crucial during disasters.
The Texas State Emergency Management Statutes document includes the Texas
Labor Code, which addresses issues such as compensation and medical benefits.
In addition, the Texas Emergency Management Executive Guide specifically states
that temporary personnel may be hired to assist with carrying out the functions
that are required to “providing financial aid to individuals or families qualified for
disaster relief ” (Texas Emergency Management Executive Guide 2013: p. 37).
In California, the 2009 California Emergency Services Act addresses several
human resource issues, such as training, compensation, and benefits, in both the
preparedness and response phases. For example, in the preparedness phase, the
act states that personnel, either from the private sector or from voluntary organ-
izations, should be identified for use in the case of a marine oil spill, and for
hazardous materials spills, management personnel should undergo training and
education to better respond if an incident occurs. In response to a crisis, the act
states that the governor can “commandeer or utilize” any personnel necessary to
fulfill the duties needed in a state of emergency. The act also addresses compen-
sation and benefits of personnel working during response to a crisis (California
Disaster Assistance Act 2006).
At the local level, many cities, counties, and regions address personnel issues
in their preparedness plans. For instance, the San Francisco Bay Area Regional
Emergency Coordination Plan (2008) states that in the event of a disaster and the
emergency operations center is activated, three staff members must be present in
the emergency operations center. In addition, the Logistics Section is responsible
for staffing the operations center, both from within the affected jurisdiction and
from outside, unaffected regions. In addition, Mann (2011) found that in some
cities, such as Novi, Michigan; Federal Way, Washington; and Lake Havasu City,
Arizona, human resource professionals assist with identifying pre- and post-dis-
aster roles of both essential and non-essential personnel, transportation needs,
and outside organizations or support services that could assist with mandatory
important functions in times of disaster. In addition, cities such as Kalamazoo,
Michigan and Grand Forks, Michigan include policies in their emergency plans
that allow for the immediate hiring of temporary workers, address overtime and
comp pay during states of emergency, and explain how employee furloughs
during states of emergency will be handled (Mann 2011).
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154 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
Thus, because cities, counties, regions, and states could not prepare,
respond, nor recover from disasters without employees, it is important to include
certain personnel issues in emergency plans. And, since coastal areas are more
vulnerable than non-coastal areas, this paper investigates if the human resource
professionals in coastal local government emergency planning are more prepared
than their non-coastal counterparts.
3 Methods and Results
Local government emergency plans must address multiple elements for effective
and efficient response. However, local governments often have limited staff and
financial resources, especially during struggling economic times, so administra-
tors and officials must include as many individuals from departments within
their organization to address potential issues.
To investigate their involvement or lack thereof, Mann (2011), in a study
funded by the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State Uni-
versity, conducted a survey of local government human resource professionals in
US cities with populations of 50,000 – 249,999 in January and February 2011. The
2007 Census identified approximately 19,495 cities and towns in the US, and a
total of 608 of those were cities with populations of 50,000 – 249,999. The names
and contact information for the HR director, manager, or other appropriate repre-
sentative was retrieved via the local government website or through direct contact
either by email or phone. However, after several attempts to contact three cities,
identification of the appropriate representative could not be identified, resulting
in a population of 605 potential respondents.
Potential respondents were mailed a letter introducing the research project
along with a hard copy of the survey. Respondents could either complete the
hard copy and fax the survey to the researcher, or complete the survey electroni-
cally after receiving the link to the survey, which was included in three follow-up
emails. Of the 605 potential respondents contacted, 209 completed the survey,
yielding a response rate of 35%, which is comparable to other HR surveys (Hays
and Kearney 2001). While the project as a whole focused on HR professionals’
level of involvement in emergency planning and the types of human resource
issues included in local government emergency plans, this particular study
sought to compare the local government emergency plans of coastal vs. non-
coastal cities.
To ensure equal distribution among the respondents, the data was examined
based on the 10 FEMA regions. The response rate per region ranged from 22% to
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 155
48%, with the largest response rate from FEMA Region VIII, which includes six
states. Region VI followed with a response rate of 47%, which included Texas,
which, as mentioned previously, is the state that leads the nation as experienc-
ing the most disasters. Overall, the response from the 10 regions was normally
distributed with no extreme response rates from any region.
3.1 Discussion of Variables
The authors identified and tested five hypotheses in which the independent
variable was city location (coastal v. non-coastal) and the dependent variables
included participation in local government planning meetings, perception of pre-
paredness, pre- and post-disaster HR activities, inclusion of emergency prepared-
ness information in orientation programs, and implementation of HR policies for
times of disaster.
The independent variable was the location of the city, either non-coastal or
coastal. For the purposes of this study, a coastal city is one that “has at least
15% of their land area in the coastal watershed” (United States Department of
Commerce, n.d., paragraph 3), or a city that is located within 30 miles of a coast-
line. The cities within the dataset were identified by the authors and were coded
as 0 for non-coastal and 1 for coastal. Sixty-three individuals from coastal cities
and 146 individuals from non-coastal cities completed the survey, resulting in a
response rate of 35%.
3.2 Hypotheses and Findings
Specifically, the hypotheses are:
H1: As HR professionals’ years of experience increases so does the likelihood
of participation in emergency planning.
H2: Local government HR professionals in coastal cities are more likely to
participate in local government emergency planning meetings than
local government HR professionals in non-coastal cities.
H3: HR professionals in coastal cities are more likely to rank their cities as
more prepared than HR professionals in non-coastal cities.
H4: Local governments in coastal cities are more likely to include pre- and
post-disaster HR activities in their emergency plans than local govern-
ments in non-coastal cities.
H5: Local governments in coastal cities are more likely to implement HR pol-
icies for times of disaster than local governments in non-coastal cities.
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156 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
3.2.1 Hypothesis 1: Years of Experience and Participation in Emergency
Planning
The authors first were interested in investigating whether years of experience
in the field of HR increased the likelihood of an HR professional’s involve-
ment in emergency planning. In most careers, the longer one stays in a field,
the more experience and knowledge gained. With this in mind, the authors
hypothesized that those who have worked in HR for many years had a greater
chance of experiencing a disaster. From each disaster, lessons are learned,
and as Goodman and Mann (2008) found, human resource professionals
are no exception to this rule. In examining the survey data, approximately
130 respondents stated that their city had faced at least one disaster in the
last 5 years and more than 45% said they had worked in the field of human
resource management for more than 20 years. Mann (2011) found that the level
of involvement of HR professionals in emergency planning was positively cor-
related to the number of HR functions in local government emergency plans
Thus, the authors hypothesized that as years of experience of local govern-
ment human resource professionals increase so does the likelihood that they
participate in emergency planning meetings.
For this hypothesis, the survey question, “How many years have you worked
in the field of human resource management?” to which respondents could
answer < 1 year, 1–3 years, 4–10 years, 11–15 years, 16–20 years, and more than 20
years. The variable was then coded into 6 variables from 0 to 5, with < 1 year as
0 and more than 20 years as 5. The variable was labeled Years of Experience and
served as the independent variable.
HR professionals were also asked, “Do you or a member of the human
resources department for your city government regularly participate in emer-
gency planning meetings?” to which they could respond do not know, no, or
yes. The variable was labeled Participation, and, was coded as a 0-1 depend-
ent variable, with 0 being do not participate and 1 being participate because
the analysis focuses only on positive or negative answers. However, One-Way
ANOVA did not indicate a positive relationship between the years of experience
of HR professionals and their participation in emergency planning meetings
(F = 2.395, df = 5/206, p < 0.05) (Table 1). Although the relationship is significant
at the 0.05 level, years of experience does not impact participation in emer-
gency planning meetings. Thus, the hypothesis that as HR professionals’ years
of experience increases so does the likelihood of participation in emergency
planning is rejected.
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 157
3.2.2 Hypothesis 2: City Location and Participation of HR professionals in
Emergency Planning Meetings
Because coastal cities are subject to many similar vulnerabilities, the authors
hypothesized that local government HR professionals in coastal cities are more
likely to participate in emergency planning meetings than local government
HR professionals not in coastal cities. Again, the dependent variable, Participa-
tion, described above, was coded as a 0-1 variable. Of the 62 HR professionals in
coastal cities who answered yes or no, 48, or 77.4%, reported that they regularly
participate in local government emergency planning meetings. Of the 145 HR pro-
fessionals in non-coastal cities who answered yes or no, 90, or 62.1%, said they
regularly participate in emergency planning meetings. The independent variable,
City Location, also was coded as a 0-1 variable with 0 being a non-coastal city and
1 being a coastal city, based on the definition described above.
Cross-tabulations revealed the χ2 statistic, 0.032, which is significant at
the 0.05 level, indicating that the relationship between participation of HR
professionals in emergency planning and the location of the city in which
they work is generalizable to the entire population (see Table 2). Based on
Table 1 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) Years of Experience and Participation.
Years of Experience n Mean F
< 1 year 4 1.50 2.395; 0.039 1–3 years 6 1.00 4–10 years 25 1.68 11–15 years 42 1.71 16–20 years 33 1.64 More than 20 years 97 1.67 Total 207 1.65
Table 2 City Location and Participation in Emergency Planning Meetings.
Participation Non-Coastal Coastal
Do not participate 37.9% 22.6%
Participate 62.1% 77.4%
N size 145 62
Chi-square < 0.05. Note: Percentages total 100% down each column.
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158 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
these results, the null hypothesis, The null hypothesis that HR profession-
als in coastal cities are no more likely to participate in emergency planning
meetings than those in non-coastal cities can be rejected and the hypothesis
that local government HR professionals in coastal cities are more likely to par-
ticipate in local government emergency planning meetings than local govern-
ment HR professionals in non-coastal cities indicates that the relationship is
accepted.
3.2.3 Hypothesis 3: Perception of Preparedness
Because coastal cities face hazards that have increased awareness during certain
times of the year, such as media coverage on preparedness for hurricanes, the
authors hypothesized that HR professionals in coastal cities are more likely to
rank their cities as more prepared than HR professionals in non-coastal cities. In
the survey, HR professionals were asked about their perception of the prepared-
ness of the city. Specifically, the question asked, “On a scale of 1–10 with 1 being
not at all prepared and 10 being very prepared, how prepared do you believe your
city is if a disaster hit your area right now?” This variable was labeled Prepared-
ness Ranking, and was coded 0 to 10, with 0 being not at all prepared and 10
being very prepared. The independent variable, City Location, described above,
served as the independent variable, and was coded 0-1.
The mean for the variable Preparedness Ranking was 7.31, with a mean of
7.13 for non-coastal cities and 7.77 for coastal cities. Thus, those cities labeled
as coastal cities have higher scores than their counterparts, indicating a posi-
tive relationship between Preparedness Ranking and City Location. In addi-
tion, One-Way ANOVA indicated a significant relationship at the 0.01 level
between HR professionals in coastal cities and the likelihood that they rank
their cities as more prepared (F = 6.84, df+1/207, p < 0.010) (see Table 3). Thus,
this result confirms the hypothesis that HR professionals in coastal cities are
more likely to rank their cities as more prepared than HR professionals in non-
coastal cities.
Table 3 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) City Location and Preparedness Ranking.
City Location n Mean F
Non-coastal 146 7.11 6.84; p = 0.010
Coastal 62 7.77
Total 208 7.31
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 159
3.2.4 Hypothesis 4: City Location and HR Activities in Emergency Plans
Because Goodman and Mann (2008) found that many important human resource
management activities were not included in local government emergency plans
on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the authors were interested in further investigat-
ing the issue nationwide. Based on the literature review and previous findings,
the authors hypothesized that local governments in coastal cities are more likely
to implement HR policies for times of disaster than local governments in non-
coastal cities.
Respondents were asked to rank their level of agreement to a list of 28
common HR activities in areas such as workforce management, compensation,
and communication that are important tasks in HR departments of local govern-
ment (see Table 4). Respondents were asked to choose from highly disagree, disa-
gree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, or highly agree, which were then coded
0-4, respectively. For each city, the sum of the 28 answers was calculated and
transformed into the variable HR Activities that ranged from 0 to 112.
Of the 28 activities included in the list, the activity that was most common
among all local governments, or had the highest mean, was “procedures to
report facility problems such as physical damage that could increase risk and
harm during a disaster” (see Table 4). This particular activity was also the most
common when examining only non-coastal cities. Among coastal cities only, the
activity that ranked as the most common, or having the highest mean among only
these cities, was procedures to report facility problems such as physical damage
that could increase risk and harm during a disaster.
The hypothesis was tested using one-way ANOVA, which indicated a signif-
icant difference in the number of pre- and post-disaster HR activities included
in the emergency plans of coastal cities compared to that of non-coastal cities
(F = 5.34, df = 1/208, p = 0.022). The overall mean for the variable HR activities was
64.88, while the mean for HR activities in coastal cities was 70.08 and the mean
for HR activities in non-coastal cities was 62.64 (see Table 5). Thus, in the case,
higher scores found on the variable for coastal cities indicate that these cities
are more likely to include more pre- and post-disaster HR activities in their emer-
gency plans compared to that of non-coastal cities. Thus, because the relation-
ship is also significant at the 0.05 level, the hypothesis is upheld.
3.2.5 Hypothesis 5: Implementation of HR Disaster Policies
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many Mississippi local governments faced
issues with hiring, discipline, termination, payroll, among others. Goodman
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160 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
Table 4 Descriptives of HR Activities.
HR Activities
n = 209
The following list contains specific pre-disaster and post-disaster activities
that some cities have incorporated as part of their emergency preparedness
plans. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements
regarding human resource management and emergency planning. Please
choose: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree,
4 = disagree, and 5 = strongly disagree. (Combined following 28 variables.)
Activity Means Activity Description/Survey Question
Availability Overall: 2.60
Non-coastal: 2.53
Coastal: 2.76
My human resources office continually assesses internal
workforce availability.
Secure
Equipment
Overall: 2.05
Non-coastal: 1.92
Coastal: 2.37
My human resources office has procedures regarding the
securing of office equipment to lessen risk of physical
harm in the event of a disaster.
Protect Info Overall: 2.34
Non-coastal: 2.29
Coastal: 2.44
My human resources office has procedures regarding
securing office equipment such as electronic equipment and
furniture to protect organizational information and property.
Facility
Problems
Overall: 2.72
Non-coastal: 2.74
Coastal: 2.68
My human resources office has procedures to report
facility problems such as physical damage that could
increase risk and harm during a disaster.
Org Structure Overall: 2.56
Non-coastal: 2.50
Coastal: 2.70
My human resources office helps develop the
organizational structure in times of disaster.
Building Maps Overall: 1.75
Non-coastal: 1.71
Coastal: 1.83
My human resources office distributes building maps
upon hiring that identify evacuation routes.
Response
Resources
Overall: 2.35
Non-coastal: 2.28
Coastal: 2.52
My human resources office has identified essential
resources needed for disaster response and where they
can be acquired.
Recovery
Resources
Overall: 2.32
Non-coastal: 2.23
Coastal: 2.51
My human resources office has identified essential
resources needed for disaster recovery and where they
can be acquired.
Worker
Resources
Overall: 2.36
Non-coastal: 2.25
Coastal: 2.62
My human resources office has identified essential
resources for response workers.
Transport
Needs
Overall: 2.01
Non-coastal: 1.90
Coastal: 2.27
My human resources office has identified transportation
needs and resources.
Essential Roles Overall: 2.57
Non-coastal: 2.47
Coastal: 2.83
My human resources office assists in identifying pre- and
post-disaster roles of essential personnel (beyond regular
duties).
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 161
HR Activities
n = 209
The following list contains specific pre-disaster and post-disaster activities
that some cities have incorporated as part of their emergency preparedness
plans. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements
regarding human resource management and emergency planning. Please
choose: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree,
4 = disagree, and 5 = strongly disagree. (Combined following 28 variables.)
Activity Means Activity Description/Survey Question
Nonessential
Roles
Overall: 2.40
Non-coastal: 2.31
Coastal: 2.60
My human resources office assists in identifying pre- and
post-disaster roles of non-essential personnel (beyond
regular duties).
Support Overall: 2.29
Non-coastal: 2.15
Coastal: 2.62
My human resources office has identified outside
organizations/support services that could assist with
mandatory important functions in times of disaster.
Planning Times Overall: 1.96
Non-coastal: 1.90
Coastal: 2.10
My human resources office established timeframes for
disaster planning activities.
Email Overall: 1.90
Non-coastal: 1.77
Coastal: 2.21
My human resources office regularly communicates with
employees by email regarding emergency preparedness.
Software Overall: 2.64
Non-coastal: 2.64
Coastal: 2.63
My human resources office has critical software and
hardware necessary for continuity of operations such as
payroll software.
KSAs Overall: 1.93
Non-coastal: 1.87
Coastal: 2.06
My human resources office conducts regular assessments
of employee knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) useful
for disaster response and recovery.
CIS Counselors Overall: 2.68
Non-coastal: 2.67
Coastal: 2.70
My human resources office has procedures that include
critical incident stress briefing counselors.
HRMIT Overall: 2.01
Non-coastal: 1.97
Coastal: 2.13
My human resources office has a partner outside of the
region that can help with HRM/IT needs during a disaster.
Disaster Pay Overall: 2.56
Non-coastal: 2.49
Coastal: 2.75
My human resources office analyzes potential
compensation issues that may arise post-disaster such as
overtime and disaster pay.
Worker Supply Overall: 2.16
Non-coastal: 2.14
Coastal: 2.21
My human resources office regularly forecasts internal
and external supply of employees.
Contact Lists Overall: 2.65
Non-coastal: 2.60
Coastal: 2.75
My human resources office regularly updates and
distributes employee contact lists to key personnel.
(Table 4 Continued)
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162 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
HR Activities
n = 209
The following list contains specific pre-disaster and post-disaster activities
that some cities have incorporated as part of their emergency preparedness
plans. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements
regarding human resource management and emergency planning. Please
choose: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree,
4 = disagree, and 5 = strongly disagree. (Combined following 28 variables.)
Activity Means Activity Description/Survey Question
Bargaining Overall: 2.05
Non-coastal: 1.89
Coastal: 2.41
My human resources office has collective bargaining
agreement that address employment issues during
emergencies or disasters.
Season Email Overall: 2.64
Non-coastal: 2.57
Coastal: 2.81
My human resources office regularly communicates with
employees by email during regionally high-risk times such
as flu season or hurricane season.
Locations Overall: 2.41
Non-coastal: 2.28
Coastal: 2.71
My human resources office has identified primary or
secondary meeting locations for employees in the
aftermath of a disaster.
Nonessential
Schedule
Overall: 2.12
Non-coastal: 1.96
Coastal: 2.51
My human resources office has a timeline for nonessential
personnel to report to work post-disaster.
Dissemination Overall: 2.48
Non-coastal: 2.35
Coastal: 2.78
My human resources office has identified methods of
information dissemination before, during, and after a
disaster.
Info Equipment Overall: 2.36
Non-coastal: 2.27
Coastal: 2.59
My human resources office has the equipment needed for
post-disaster information dissemination.
(Table 4 Continued)
Table 5 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) City Location and HR Activities.
City Location n Mean F
Coastal 63 70.08 5.34; p < 0.05 Non-coastal 146 62.64 Total 209 64.88
and Mann (2008) reported that many of the respondents said that these typical
tasks became incredibly difficult after the Hurricane Katrina. However, several
respondents indicated that many of these policies would be included in the
revisions of emergency plans and were lessons learned. With this in mind, the
authors hypothesized that coastal cities are more likely to include more HR poli-
cies in their emergency plans compared to that of non-coastal cities.
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 163
In the 2011 survey, HR professionals were asked whether their local govern-
ment has established HR policies for times of disaster, which included practices
pertaining to hiring, discipline, and cross-training (see Table 6). The policy that
was most common, or had the highest overall mean among coastal and non-
coastal cities, as well as among coastal cities only and non-coastal cities only
was the existence of mutual aid agreements with other cities, counties, or states.
Respondents were asked to choose from highly disagree, disagree, neither
agree nor disagree, agree, or highly agree, which were then coded 0-4 respec-
tively. For each city, the sum of the 12 answers was calculated and transformed
into the variable HR Disaster Policies that ranged from 0 to 48.
The hypothesis was tested using One-Way ANOVA, which indicated a signifi-
cant difference in the number of HR policies included in the emergency plans of
coastal cities compared to that of non-coastal cities (F = 10.28, df = 1/208, p = 0.002).
The overall mean for the variable HR Disaster Policies was 24.86, while the mean
for HR Disaster Policies in coastal cities was 27.39 and the mean for HR activities
in non-coastal cities was 23.78 (see Table 7). The higher scores found on the vari-
able for coastal cities indicate that these cities are more likely to include more HR
policies in their emergency plans compared to that of non-coastal cities. Thus,
because the relationship is also significant at the 0.01 level, the hypothesis is
upheld.
4 Conclusions
As the populations of coastal cities continue to grow and coastal environments
change, vulnerabilities are also increasing in these coastal cities. From social
and cultural vulnerabilities to technological and physical vulnerabilities, ensur-
ing that all resources to overcome these obstacles are identified and available is
important to emergency planning. As evidenced from the analysis, coastal cities
are making great strides in ensuring they are prepared for the hazards they face
by addressing some of the human resource issues that become increasingly rel-
evant during times of crisis. While non-coastal cities obviously understand the
importance of these issues, coastal cities seem to understand that employees also
become victims and should be protected when disaster occurs.
Yet, the results indicate that work is still needed in this area. For instance, one
of the problems Goodman and Mann (2008) identified was that many comput-
ers in Mississippi local governments were destroyed during Katrina because they
were left on the floor or were not removed. Many underestimated how far inland
the storm surge would travel, thus, important payroll files were destroyed. Only
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164 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
Table 6 Descriptives of HR Disaster Policies.
HR Disaster
Policies
n = 209
The following list contains specific pre-disaster and post-disaster
activities that some cities have incorporated as part of their emergency
preparedness plans. Please indicate your level of agreement with
the following statements regarding human resource management
and emergency planning. Please choose: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree,
3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = disagree, and 5 = strongly disagree.
(Combined following 28 variables.)
Policy Means Policy Description/Survey Question
Hiring Practices Overall: 2.02
Non-coastal: 1.89
Coastal: 2.33
My local government has policies that address
hiring practices during states of emergency. For
this particular variable, one value was missing.
Temp Workers Overall: 2.87
Non-coastal: 2.82
Coastal: 2.98
My local government allows for the immediate
hiring of temporary workers.
Shortage Pay Overall: 1.70
Non-coastal: 1.62
Coastal: 1.87
My local government adjusts pay to account for
labor shortages during times of disaster.
Pay Differential Overall: 1.73
Non-coastal: 1.55
Coastal: 2.14
My local government has a pay differential for
employees who work during times of declared
disasters.
Furloughs Overall: 1.71
Non-coastal: 1.64
Coastal: 1.87
My local government has policies that
address employee furloughs during states of
emergency.
Comp Pay Overall: 2.15
Non-coastal: 1.99
Coastal: 2.54
My local government has separate policies that
address overtime/comp pay during states of
emergency.
Retention Overall: 1.64
Non-coastal: 1.53
Coastal: 1.89
My local government has policies that
address employee retention during states of
emergency.
Discipline Overall: 1.44
Non-coastal: 1.36
Coastal: 1.63
My local government has streamlined policies
for disciplining and terminating employees
during states of emergency.
Counseling Overall: 1.49
Non-coastal: 1.45
Coastal: 1.59
My local government mandates counseling for
employees during states of emergency.
Cross Train Overall: 2.49
Non-coastal: 2.49
Coastal: 2.51
My local government cross-trains employees in
preparation for emergencies.
Aid Overall: 3.18
Non-coastal: 3.10
Coastal: 3.37
My local government has mutual aid
agreements with other cities, counties, states.
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HR Professionals in Coastal Cities Emergency Planning 165
Table 7 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) City Location and HR Disaster Policies.
City Location n Mean F
Coastal 61 27.39 10.28; p < 0.001 Non-coastal 142 23.78 Total 203 24.86
HR Disaster
Policies
n = 209
The following list contains specific pre-disaster and post-disaster
activities that some cities have incorporated as part of their emergency
preparedness plans. Please indicate your level of agreement with
the following statements regarding human resource management
and emergency planning. Please choose: 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree,
3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = disagree, and 5 = strongly disagree.
(Combined following 28 variables.)
Policy Means Policy Description/Survey Question
Transportation Overall: 2.61
Non-coastal: 2.55
Coastal: 2.76
My local government has identified
transportation needs and resources.
(Table 6 Continued)
30% of respondents stated that their local government has identified a partner
outside of the region that can help with technology needs in the aftermath of dis-
aster. In addition, over 60% of respondents reported that their local government
does not have policies in place that address discipline and termination during
states of emergency.
In the area of training and exercises, only approximately 30% reported that
their local government has regular established timeframes for disaster planning
activities. Unfortunately, once an emergency plan has been created, the work is
not over. Holding regular exercises and including all departments in these exer-
cises are both important because individuals must know how to execute and
implement the outlined procedures.
While the study has given some insight into human resource issues that are
and are not being addressed in both coastal and non-coastal cities, some limi-
tations should be discussed. For instance, the survey considers the perspective
of only one department in emergency planning. A future study should focus on
examining the human resource issues that other departments, such as emer-
gency management, believe to be important in emergency response. In addition,
this study has presented a new area of research in emergency planning and little
research in this area has been conducted. Thus, analyzing cities of other sizes
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166 Stacey Cole Mann and Tanveer Islam
located in coastal regions, such as rural local governments and cities with larger
populations, may reveal significant differences. However, these results provide
a foundation upon which to begin investigating the impact of human resource
planning, or lack thereof, on emergency management.
Unfortunately, disasters are inevitable, and as populations increase and envi-
ronments change, vulnerabilities become more concerning. Following Hurricane
Katrina, singer Harry Connick Jr. said, “I have no doubt that the government of
this great nation will work with its people to lead New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
back to an enlightened, proud, safe part of the world.” And, although the federal
government certainly has a role in emergency planning, local governments have
the greatest responsibility in ensuring its employees and residents are safe. After
all, all disasters are local, and we must plan accordingly.
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nDocument.
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Management Institute of Higher Education. Retrieved October 27, 2012, from http://www.
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79(5):50–53.
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Homeland Security & Emergency Management 2015; 12(4): 875–889
Sharon Mastracci*
Human Resource Management Practices
to Support Emotional Labor in Emergency
Response
Abstract: Based on a continuing program of research, this paper reveals several
organizational measures needed if emotional labor is to be supported, including
self-care plans, recruiting for self-awareness, and performance evaluations that
capture more than a standard set of knowledge, skills, and abilities. The paper
focuses on the experience of emergency responders, who work in extreme condi-
tions that demand extensive emotional labor. Propositions are presented to link
human resource management practices and individual and organizational out-
comes; propositions that can inform future research and hypothesis testing in
this area.
Keywords: emergency responders; personnel management.
DOI 10.1515/jhsem-2014-0060
1 Introduction
In extreme working conditions, emergency responders must engage in mental
processes to tune out the chaos, engage fully with the patient, and attend to the
crisis at hand. Emotional labor is the mental process by which this is done. Atkins
and Parker (2012) note that evidence on emotional labor “in the helping profes-
sions suggests that encouraging people to become more compassionate without
considering the associated self-regulatory demands can lead to staff burnout
and turnover” (p. 524). As a result, “care and compassion … may well be endan-
gered where they are most expected” (Rynes et al. 2012: p. 503). Among public
service workers from whom care and compassion would be expected, evidence
suggests that they have become endangered (Bevan and Hood 2006) as workers
increasingly suffer burnout and turnover: If care workers in high-stress jobs are
*Corresponding author: Sharon Mastracci, Department of Political Science, University of Utah,
260 South Central Campus Drive, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, e-mail: s.mastracci@bham.ac.uk
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876 Sharon Mastracci
encouraged to become more compassionate without considering the emotional
labor demands needed to do so, then poor care, burnout, and turnover can arise.
Emotional labor suffuses care work: “Human services (is comprised of) high emo-
tional-labor occupations with an associated high risk of burnout” (Lilius 2012:
p. 569). This underscores the importance of identifying the organizational meas-
ures necessary to support public servants and minimize burnout and turnover
among these important public servants.
This paper is organized as follows: In the next section, the evolution of
the individual and emotion in public services is reviewed: Due to its origins
in the Progressive Era, public administration and public service scholarship
reflect Scientific Management principles of the early 20th century, rather than
the principles of humanism. Plant et al. (2011) underscore the importance
of the field of public administration to the development of homeland secu-
rity and emergency response as professions and academic fields. The third
section is comprised of an analysis of transcripts from interviews with emer-
gency responders using the Gioia Methodology (Gioia et al. 2012). In the fourth
section, findings of the analysis of emotional labor in emergency response are
discussed, including propositions resulting from this analysis that could be
used in future research. Finally, the fifth section discusses conclusions and
directions for further research.
2 Background on Emotional Labor Scholarship
in Public Service
Early American scholarship on the role of individuals in organizations is rooted
in Scientific Management principles, which arose from the Industrial Revolution
and mass production processes. From this perspective, individuals are char-
acterized as part of a larger production process, as cogs in a greater machine.
These principles are captured in an archetypical statement by American man-
agement theorist Frederick Taylor, whose name is synonymous with Scientific
Management: “In the past, man has been first, in the future the system must
be first” (1912: p. 2). Characteristics of individuals do not matter in such a work-
place. Workers are interchangeable and only their objective output matters to the
organization. The role of the individual worker in Scientific Management is con-
sistent with the role of the individual in Max Weber’s ideal bureaucracy, which
“develops the more perfectly the more the bureaucracy is dehumanized, the more
completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all
purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation”
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HRM Practices to Support Emotional Labor 877
(Weber 1922: p. 973). Taken together, the individual worker is subordinate to the
system in capital-intensive mass production processes (Taylor) and also in the
production of services delivered by the ideal bureaucracy (Weber). Public ser-
vices, being services and not tangible goods, are not produced in a factory, but
rather, by people in organizations. Weber’s ideal bureaucracy provided the blue-
print for early American theorists of public service, who imported Weber into gov-
ernment at the same time as the demands for a professionalized public service
grew during the Progressive Era. Not everyone at that time, however, applied effi-
ciency ideals from the factory floor to the public servant’s desktop. A critique of
Scientific Management principles is found among scholars taking a Post-Fordist,
humanistic approach to the individual in organizations, a holistic approach to
theorizing about the worker as a whole person, not a cog in a mass production
process. One example of this critique comes from Jane Addams, who worked
alongside municipal reformers during the turn of the last century and lamented
that they “fix their attention so exclusively on methods that they fail to consider
the final aims of city government” (2002[1902]: p. 99). Production processes that
do not account for the whole worker – emotions and all – fail to capture charac-
teristics crucial to the work of public servants, and entirely fail to fit the reality
faced by emergency responders. As public administration scholar Robert Kramer
observes: “Governance is more than the machinery of public administration, and
more than the machinery of impartial cost-benefit analysis … Human relation-
ships are at the heart of governance … all public service is people … Human rela-
tionships are the DNA of governance” (2003: p. 2).
Performance evaluations and job descriptions fail to capture the human
dimensions of public service (Guy and Newman 2004; Mastracci et al. 2006) and
are therefore stuck in an image of work forged during the industrial age by man-
agement scientists blind to the human processes by which work gets done. The
preoccupation with cognitive processes “can lead to theory and research that por-
trays organization members as cognitive stick figures whose behavior is unaffected
by emotions” (Mowday and Sutton 1993: p. 197 emphasis supplied). Madden et al.
(2012) note: “We have relied on models of organizations as machines for over a
100 years. It is time to articulate organizations as reflections of our best selves
– as communities where compassion, support, and positive energy are expected,
natural, and normal” (2012: p. 704). Competency-based human resource manage-
ment has been shown to be a strategic driver in organizational reform in emer-
gency response (Hamner 2008), but an emphasis on cognitive competencies
alone is incomplete. The importance of human resource management in emer-
gency response has been established in the literature (Jafari et al. 2008; Mann
and Islam 2015) and emotional labor is a key aspect of human resource manage-
ment and central to emergency response.
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Emotional labor is the effort to suppress inappropriate emotions and/or elicit
appropriate emotions within oneself or in another person, where “appropriate”
and “inappropriate” are dictated by the demands of the job. Emotional labor is
so integral to some jobs that, to fail to engage in emotional labor is to fail to do
the job. Public service occupations, including emergency response, are exam-
ples of just such jobs performed by emotional laborers. A social worker cannot
laugh at her clients’ circumstances. A police officer cannot betray anxiety or
fear to criminal suspects. An emergency responder cannot panic or recoil from
a patient’s gruesome injuries as she arrives on the scene of an accident. Emo-
tional labor research largely began with Arlie Russell Hochschild’s study of flight
attendants, where their performance of emotional labor fostered repeat business
and benefitted their employer’s bottom line. Hochschild underscores the trans-
actional nature of this effort: “Emotional labor is sold for a wage and therefore
has exchange value … it is bought on one hand and sold on the other” (1983: p. 7).
Hochschild introduced emotional labor to the study of organizations by sociolo-
gists and management theorists. Among public administration and management
scholars, Guy and Newman 2004 paper is the first to examine emotional labor.
They hypothesize that the gender wage gap is attributable to unpaid emotional
labor, and examine pay, job descriptions, and job attributes of state employees in
Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, and Florida in three selected listings in the Career
Service Class: Driver license examiner, food inspector, and social service coun-
selor. They find that while the food inspector earns almost as much as the social
service counselor, few qualifications are required for the food inspector position,
almost no demands for interpersonal skills are required, and more than three-
fourths – 83 percent – of jobholders are men. In contrast, both the driver license
examiner and the social service counselor require significantly more interper-
sonal interaction and emotional labor, and almost two-thirds of all driver license
examiners are women and more than three-fourths of all social service counse-
lors are women. They conclude that unpaid and taken-for-granted emotional
labor exerted by female public employees accounts for the overrepresentation
of women in certain jobs – occupational segregation by gender – which in turn
accounts for the gender wage gap found in these and other occupations. They
call for further research on the emotional components of occupations: “As we
move farther and farther away from organizations that are designed to operate
assembly lines, we must devise new structures that capture today’s work and skill
requirements … Making emotional labor visible is the first step, making it com-
pensable is the next” (Guy and Newman 2004: p. 296).
Emotional Labor: Putting the Service in Public Service (Guy et al. 2008) contin-
ued that first step, expanding upon Guy and Newman (2004) to further develop
the concept of emotional labor in public service jobs. The authors addressed
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HRM Practices to Support Emotional Labor 879
several questions: What is emotional labor? Who engages in it? Is it specific to a
department? A job? To certain people? Public servants at three different agencies
and departments in state and local government were surveyed and interviewed: A
state-level department of corrections, a county office of Public Guardian (children
and family services), and municipal-level workers in a 911 dispatch center. Analy-
sis of interview transcripts and survey data reveal several conclusions. First, emo-
tional labor is fundamental to quality public service and is the product of both
face-to-face and voice-to-voice interaction. Emotional labor involves both elicit-
ing an emotional state in another person and/or managing one’s own desired and
undesired emotions, all for the purpose of doing one’s job. Oh (2012) underscores
the importance of face-to-face interaction in emergency management. Second,
both male and female employees engage in emotional labor. Women do not
exert more emotional labor than do their male colleagues, although the nature
of emotional labor differs between women and men. Third, both new employees
and long-tenured ones engage in emotional labor; neither exerts more nor less
emotional labor. Emotional labor is not specific to an agency or department; it
is located in the job and not the jobholder; the nature of emotional labor will
vary by job, however, and some jobs involve more emotional labor than others
do. Fourth, emotions in the workplace are not antithetical to professionalism.
Emotional labor takes skill, significant effort, and is key to getting the job done.
Organizations should acknowledge emotional labor in job descriptions, hiring
procedures, training and professional development materials, employee assis-
tance and wellness programs, performance evaluations, and compensation
practices.
Emotional Labor: Working on the Razor’s Edge (Mastracci et al. 2012) asked
how public servants engaged in emotional labor. Emergency responders in three
urban areas were interviewed: Chicago, Denver, and Miami. In an instant and
faced with panicked and traumatized victims, how do workers size up a situation
and decide how to proceed? How do they use discretion in different situations?
Answers to these questions matter – not only to provide more tangible guidance
to public managers after alerting the field to the phenomenon of emotional labor,
but also due to the cognitive cost of emotional labor. When one is deliberately
suppressing an unwanted emotion or eliciting a desired affect – engaging in emo-
tional labor – fewer resources are available for cognitive processing. Mistakes can
be made on the job when engaging in emotional labor. Experimental psycholo-
gists Richards and Gross (1999) directed study subjects to not react to disturb-
ing images of auto accidents that they were shown. These subjects consistently
performed poorly on tests of working memory compared to subjects who were
not directed to suppress their reactions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging
(FMRI) showed that the activation of certain areas during emotion suppression left
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880 Sharon Mastracci
fewer resources to apply to cognitive tasks like working memory tests ( Richards
and Gross 1999; Gross and Thompson 2007; Pugh et al. 2011; Sheppes and Gross
2011). This is not to say that emotions obscure reasoning, in fact “there has been
a growing understanding by neuroscientists that emotions are not separate from
reason and that, contrary to earlier beliefs, emotions often enhance reasoning
abilities” (Rynes et al. 2012: p. 507). Suppression of emotion draws resources away
from cognitive task completion.
3 Emergency Responders and Organizational
Support for Emotional Labor1
Respondents include police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians,
crisis hotline workers, sexual assault nurse examiners, trauma nurses, medical
examiners, public hospital administrators, and domestic violence and victim
assistance workers. Public information officers are also among those interviewed,
given their central role in emergency management (Hughes and Palen 2012). In
all, forty-three emergency responders were interviewed, resulting in nearly 50 h
of interview time. Over their careers, respondents were called to hundreds of
emergencies, including several notable crises: The September 11, 2001 attack on
the World Trade Center in New York City, Hurricane Andrew in south Florida in
1992, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, the Columbine school shoot-
ings in 1999, and the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti. More than a dozen jurisdictions
are represented by the respondents, including the Chicago Fire Department and
Chicago Police Department, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, Miami Police Department,
City/County of Denver, and the Arvada Colorado Police.
Interviews were recorded and transcribed, resulting in the “word data”
(Yanow and Schwartz-Shea 2006: p. xix) upon which interpretations and sub-
sequent analytical categories are based. Using respondent voices as expert testi-
mony in order “to see from the perspective of organization members” (Gioia and
Pitre 1990: p. 588), patterns of behavior and decision-making in crisis response
are examined from the ground up, rather than frameworks imposed onto their
narratives from the top down: “through this process, researchers attempt to
account for phenomena with as few a priori ideas as possible” (Gioia and Pitre
1990: p. 588). As such, no claims are made with respect to random sampling
of study participants or universal representation of their narratives because,
1 A part of this section is found in Mastracci et al. (2012) Emotional Labor and Crisis Response.
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“concepts are embedded within a literature … the attempt to specify them once
and for all as universal constructs violates interpretive presuppositions about the
historical locatedness of scholars and actors” (Yanow and Schwartz-Shea 2006:
p. xvii). The interview protocol is found in the appendix.
To examine emotional labor in emergency response, semiotic clustering is
employed – a process also known as the Gioia Methodology (Gioia et al. 2012;
Gioia and Pitre 1990). This methodology allows the researcher to take “a system-
atic approach to new concept development and grounded theory articulation”
(p. 15), and involves three steps: First, grouping respondent direct quotes into
first-order concepts, second, organizing concepts into second-order themes, and
third, refining themes into broad dimensions. The “systematic presentation of
both a “first order” analysis (i.e.,: an analysis using informant-centric terms and
codes) and a “second order” analysis (i.e.,: one using researcher-centric con-
cepts, themes, and dimensions)” introduces methodological rigor into qualitative
analysis (Gioia et al. 2012: p. 18). Theory firmly grounded in word data emanates
from explaining relationships among the dimensions developed in step three.
4 Findings from Qualitative Analysis
Figure 1 shows the results of the three levels of analysis in the Gioia methodology:
First-order analysis “tries to adhere faithfully to informant terms”. Accordingly ,
Figure 1: Data Structure from Concepts to Themes to Aggregate Dimensions.
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the items in the first column in Figure 1 are direct quotes from respondents grouped
by concept. Grouping respondent quotes is the first step, resulting in first-order
concepts. In the second level of analysis, “we start seeking similarities and dif-
ferences among the many categories” (Gioia et al. 2012: p. 20). In step two, the
groupings made in the first step are organized and labeled. Here, I stepped back
from the verbatim quotes of respondents to create “descriptive codes, categories,
taxonomies, or interpretative schemes that are adequate at the level of meaning
of the informants” (Gioia and Pitre 1990: p. 588). These summative categoriza-
tions are recognizable to respondents. For example, several direct quotes ema-
nating from interview questions about chaotic incidents, crises of confidence, or
incidents when “everything went wrong” (see Interview Protocol questions 5, 6,
and 7), characterize respondents’ extraordinary working conditions, from inci-
dents involving children, train-vehicle accidents involving dismemberments, and
dealing with the Surfside Six attempting to land on the Miami coast and enter the
country illegally. Respondents would recognize this second-order theme as an apt
characterization of their working conditions; therefore this theme possesses face
value. Similarly, the next second-order condition in Figure 1 possesses face value,
as respondents were asked directly about their awareness of their roles as public
servants (Interview Protocol question 1). All first-order concepts are direct quotes
from respondents. Those pieces of evidence and more were employed to develop
second-order themes, which remain substantively consistent with first-order con-
cepts and recognizable to respondents. In step three, “we investigate whether it
is possible to distill the emergent second-order themes even further” (2012: p. 20)
and group second-order themes into Aggregate Dimensions. Explaining the inter-
action among Aggregate Dimensions results in theoretical propositions that are
firmly grounded in the words of expert respondents. Aggregate Dimensions can
then point the researcher in the direction of developing concepts, which are “pre-
cursors to (measurable) constructs in making sense of organizational worlds –
whether as practitioners living in those worlds, researchers trying to investigate
them, or theorists working to model them” (Gioia et al. 2012: p. 16). Figure 1 is the
three-column Data Structure prescribed by the Gioia methodology, which illus-
trates the analytical steps taken to organize respondent quotes into themes and
then into theoretical dimensions.
The ultimate objective of the Gioia methodology is to explain the relation-
ships among the third step Aggregate Dimensions, resulting in “a vibrant inductive
model that is grounded in the data (as exemplified by the data structure), one that
captures the informants’ experience in theoretical terms” (Gioia et al. 2012: p. 22).
Based on prior emotional labor research, the following relationships among the
three Aggregate Dimensions shown in Figure 1 are set forth: In the context of highly
visible and scrutinized work (top dimension in Figure 1) – given the public nature
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of the work and a sense of public ownership due to citizens’ role as taxpayers –
individual emergency responders employ organizational or individual self-preser-
vation techniques (second dimension in Figure 1) in order to engage in emotional
labor (third dimension above). Emotional labor is a combination of self-awareness
and empathy. Self-awareness can be enhanced formally by employers that foster
an environment to support the emotional labor demands on their employees, or
informally by individuals emphasizing task interdependency in their organiza-
tions (Grant and Patil 2012; Madden et al. 2012). It is preferable that the organiza-
tion implements measures to support emotional labor, leaving emotional laborers
free to do their work. Employers can foster such an environment by recruiting and
hiring individuals who are aware of their emotional responses at work and who
can gauge their emotional status at any given time, and by implementing practices
to cultivate emotional self-awareness and ongoing emotional management such
as Critical Incident Stress Debriefings and Self-Care Plans. Organizations can and
should purposefully cultivate an “ethic of care” (Lawrence and Maitlis 2012: p. 641).
To adequately hire, train, develop, and evaluate workers on the basis of per-
formance, organizations must address the whole worker. Workers must be able
to suppress, control, and elicit their and others’ emotions as the job demands.
Employers must prepare employees for emotional labor demands and equip
them with the skills and resources necessary to manage their own and others’
emotions as their work situations demand – and reward them for doing it
well. Self-Care strategies and post-incident Critical Incident Stress Debriefings
(CISDs) help first responders address the emotional labor demands of their jobs
(Flannery and Everly 2012); techniques include post-incident comprehen-
sive stress debriefings, defusing sessions, and formal counseling. Emergency
responders effectively engage in extreme levels of emotional labor through
execution of well-planned standard operating procedures, standing orders, and
intense, repeated training designed to make decision-making almost automatic.
In addition, uniforms take away the individual characteristics of workers and
turn them into generic responders, thereby emphasizing authority while masking
demographic differences. Workers become their role. Employers acknowledging
the emotional dimensions of work and the emotional labor demands on their
workers provide the context within which workers can engage in emotional
labor and minimize risk of burnout. Finally, articulating “How” emotional labor
is done highlights the actions and behaviors employers can target in job descrip-
tions and performance evaluations to make emotional labor compensable.
Self-awareness is integral to emotional labor and the expression of com-
passion and empathy because “individuals will know “who they are” have
a stronger sense of self-worth, hence, they will be less threatened and over-
whelmed by another’s suffering” (Atkins and Parker 2012: p. 536). Hsieh et al.
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(2012) also established a link between compassion and emotional labor: As com-
passion increased, cognitive dissonance – which is highly related to burnout
– decreased. Among emergency responders, compassion mainly took the form
of empathy for patients by public servants demonstrating self-awareness. Emo-
tional labor enables compassion. For instance, an Emergency Medical Techni-
cian (EMT) in Miami describes her first-hand experience as a patient, which
caused her to empathize with her patients and ultimately informed her EMT
practice:
I had a C-section last year and it was an emergency C-section and nobody was telling me
what was going on. I thought I was going to have a panic attack. I just started crying. For the
first time, I was panicked. (Since then) I have made sure even if (the patient) is in cardiac
arrest, I try to talk to them because if you don’t know what’s going on, you’re scared.
Several respondents articulated their exercise of emotional labor through their
principle to treat patients as if they were members of their own families, as this
Chicago firefighter asks:
How would you like your mother or father to be treated? How would you like to be treated?
His Miami counterpart explains:
There’s something about having a child that allows you to put yourself in their shoes; where
before I had a child, it would affect me, but not in the same way.
And a police officer in Chicago further echoes this sentiment:
A woman had too many kids in the car and they weren’t wearing seatbelts. Of course she
gets into an accident. Well, they were working on one of the kids and I came up to the back
of the ambulance and they were working away and I caught a glimpse of the kid. At that time
my kids were about that age and it hit me. I had to go back to the car and sit for a little bit. I
was thinking, “What if that was my kid?”
The importance of self-care plans to sustain self-awareness and empathy was
alluded to by several respondents and directly articulated by one responder at
the Columbine school shootings:
Responding to that was hideous … there were Denver SWAT officers in tears with that deer-
caught-in-the-headlights look, trying to catch a breath. EMS workers – people that ordinar-
ily you don’t expect to see fall apart – were falling apart left and right. It was incredibly
painful to be there, and the longer the day got, the worse it got … we all had to seek pro-
fessional help after Columbine. We had to bring in a psychologist to come and talk to us
because it was so impactful.
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In reaction to such career- and life-changing incidents, another Denver
respondent went on to develop self-care plans and require them of her staff to
reduce burnout and minimize turnover:
It is a plan that requires staff to develop stretch goals in the area of physical, emotional,
financial, intellectual and spiritual health so that people coming into the agency know that
that’s part of the requirement, is part of the job description, is part of the annual perfor-
mance review and so within the first 30 days they are creating this plan and typically meas-
urable outcome oriented, and it’s amazing what people get done in a year and how great
they feel about it. (The self-care plan) is a large part why some of the staff say that they
remained at the agency for such a long period of time. … Some people come to this agency
because they know the self-care plan exists.
A Chicago firefighter describes the circumstances needed for positive and
productive CISDs:
When you get to sit in that room with those people and everyone’s honest, if you have the
right personalities that take it seriously, you come to realize how everybody felt that same
frustration.
The relationships theorized among the Aggregate Dimensions shown in
Figure 1 as well as respondents’ direct quotes produce the following propositions,
which can become testable hypotheses in subsequent research:
Proposition 1: Public servants who combine self-awareness and empathy will
effectively engage in emotional labor and express compassion for their clientele.
Proposition 2: Organizations that recognize and compensate for emotional labor
will have lower burnout and turnover compared to organizations that do not.
Proposition 3: Organizations that implement measures to support their emotional
laborers like CISDs and self-care plans will have lower burnout and turnover com-
pared to organizations that do not.
5 Concluding Thoughts: Emotional Labor in
Emergency Response
The cost of effective emergency response is emotional labor, which is the
effort to suppress or elicit emotions in oneself and/or patients and clientele.
Emotional suppression draws resources away from cognitive tasks, meaning
mistakes can be made. Encouraging care workers to become more passion-
ate without considering the cost of emotional labor can lead to burnout and
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886 Sharon Mastracci
turnover (Atkins and Parker 2012). Evidence from research on emotional labor
informs the scholarship on compassion in organizations by clarifying the
concept of emotional labor and identifying how public servants engage in emo-
tional labor in order to capture aspects of work that can provide organizational
support for emotional laborers. Organizations can recruit for self-awareness
and take steps to enhance employee self-awareness and empathy by emphasiz-
ing the interrelatedness of tasks (Grant and Patil 2012). Self-Care programs and
CISDs help care workers develop healthy boundaries so that they may engage
in emotional labor without their work becoming all consuming. Finally, the
propositions posited in this paper could be restated as testable hypotheses in
further empirical work, and indeed may not be the only propositions possible
from the evidence. The Gioia methodology provides a clear road map for trans-
forming word data into broader categories that possess face value and remain
true to respondents’ perspectives, and then develop testable hypotheses for
researchers. In this way, theory can remain firmly rooted in practice and grow
and evolve as emergency responders in the field react and respond to their
changing contexts.
Appendix: Interview Protocol
1. When someone asks you to describe your job, what do you usually say?
2. In your line of work, do you feel a certain responsibility toward a particular
group? If so, who or what?
3. Have you ever had an incident where your abilities or credibility was ques-
tioned? For instance, has anyone ever said to you:
a. Do you have any idea what I’m going through?
b. Aren’t you a little young/old to be doing this?
c. Do you have any idea what you’re doing?
d. You don’t look/sound like a (firefighter, nurse, police officer, etc.) ______ …
i. What happened?
ii. What did you do?
4. Have you ever had an incident when you had to bend or break the rules (think
entirely outside the box, something came out of left field, etc.)? – when you
had to suddenly change course, readjust, or depart from standard operating
procedure?
a. What happened?
b. What did you do?
5. Have you ever suffered your own crisis of confidence?
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a. What happened?
b. What did you do?
6. Have you ever had a completely chaotic incident when it was up to you (there
was no one else to turn to) to reestablish control? Alternatively, have you ever
been called in to help someone else handle an incident?
a. What happened?
b. What did you do?
7. Is there a particular incident that sticks out in your mind when everything
went wrong (hit the fan)?
a. What happened?
b. What did you do?
c. What was the fallout?
d. What role, if any, does this case play in the way you do your job now?
8. Is there a particular incident that sticks out in your mind when everything
went right?
a. What happened?
b. What did you do?
c. What was the fallout?
d. What role, if any, does this case play in the way you do your job now?
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888 Sharon Mastracci
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