Workers, bosses still feeling stress from Sept. 11

By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer

Employees who lost their jobs after Sept. 11 suffered many hardships, but those still at work have been hit with their own set of woes. Workplace stress is on the rise, fraying nerves from the bottom to the top of the corporate ladder.

"The rank and file will feel the most intense pressure in terms of doing more with less," said Carey Brown, manager of Straub's Employee Assistance Program. "But if they're an owner or manager, they might have further stress in terms of holding the bigger picture economically."

Many Hawai'i employers have delayed bringing back furloughed employees because of concerns about the future of Hawai'i's tourism-based economy. That can leave workplaces operating in a kind of limbo.

"I know that for individual employees, there's still a lot of uncertainty about will their hours hold, will they be reduced, when will they be back on full time," said Linda Foye, president of Workplace Solutions, a statewide employee assistance program. "There's still a lot of concern among employees about their own personal finances. Everyone's kind of just marking time, you know, and hoping for the best."

Employers have their own worries in this atmosphere.

"It's very difficult to maintain morale and keep everybody wanting to be really productive during times of uncertainty," Foye said.

"We like to deal with the known. It's like waiting for the results from the doctor — when you're dealing with the unknown or the uncertain, it's a different kind of stress," she said.

In times like these, workplace experts say, the best approach for employers is to be as honest and open with their employees as possible.

Ann Katekaru, senior consultant with Inkinen & Associates, a Honolulu executive search and human resources consulting firm, says many employees are a lot more "forgiving" of their employers, because they realize these are tough times.

At the same time, she said, "Employers have to learn there's a certain amount of trust they have to maintain because if they take advantage (of employees), then it can turn into a very unhealthy workplace.

"If an employer makes a statement about their financial condition, then it had better be true, and if the employees find out otherwise, that's the kind of thing that will erode confidence and trust," she said.

The result of such openness, Katekaru says, will be "greater buy-in and support" by employees, even to the point of offering suggestions for areas where companies can save money.

Bill Brown, senior vice president of human resources and planning for Outrigger Hotels & Resorts, said Outrigger executives have been doing their best to "communicate, communicate, communicate" with all employees as the hotel chain struggles to recover from the events of September.

Executives have been visiting Outrigger's various properties, having short meetings with workers before their shifts begin, he said. "We have made an effort to talk about business and help them understand what we're doing to build the business back," Brown said.

"Whether we had terrifically good news or not, the fact that we were coming directly to people to tell them what our plans were and also to explain what the limits were on what we were doing was important to folks. They felt that everything was being disclosed to them. I think that's helped people to feel some amount of stability in an unstable situation," he said.