Be the Rock Amid the Storm

By Scott Pelava

As a business owner, you try to cover all your bases. You try to do the right thing for your business, your employees, your family and yourself. The right thing, however, will not always help you.

Around this time last year, I had two full-time technicians. Just a few weeks later, I had one. Tony left the office five minutes early to run an errand, and he never returned. One mile outside the office, he was hit by a runaway car that ignored a stop sign, struck his vehicle and flipped it into a telephone pole. He died at the scene of the crash within miles of his shop in a small south-central Minnesota community.

How do you prepare for something like this? The truth is, you can’t—you can only take the steps to try to protect your staff and their well-being until the unthinkable happens. Nonetheless—after the grief had passed—we learned some lessons about how to support your staff and yourself through times of crisis.

First, ensure that you have emergency contact information for everyone, and I mean everyone, that you employ. An old employee had an ongoing medical issue, and I realized if I ever had to contact anyone close to the employee, I’d need a resource to do so. Everyone locks their cell phones (smartly), so you can’t rely upon their mobile devices to find a spouse, a brother or sister, or a friend.

So we put together an emergency contact list. Sure, you might have your employees’ names and addresses on their applications, but what about next of kin? I created a simple spreadsheet that lists everyones’ emergency contacts’ names, numbers, emails and addresses. It’s also important to know any allergens or other medical conditions that may affect your staff every day. We update the list every year; when faced with a crisis situation, you don’t want to be fumbling through Facebook.

So now you have resources close to your staff in the event of an emergency. But what about your business? It may seem callous to think about during critical periods, but as shop owners, you have to think about and account for the shop itself; your employees will thank you later. After our crisis with Tony, my insurance agent told me about key employee life insurance.

What is key insurance? It’s a safeguard to protect businesses when your irreplaceable employees need to be replaced. As a small shop, losing an employee can mean a lot of lost revenue coupled with the cost of advertising, hiring and onboarding. Many companies use key life insurance to cover critical positions and protect the business, accounting for the loss of those with invaluable knowledge or technical skills; key contracts, management or leadership responsibilities; even critical IT and/or the ability to operate machinery or equipment. Since the accident last year at our shop, I’ve enrolled in key insurance. Everyone thinks, “It won’t happen to me,” until it does.

Last—and this is most important—you must account for grief. Offer people the support they need. Everyone grieves in different ways, and some may need counseling while others crave privacy. Some may need to talk or have a shoulder to cry on; be that shoulder. Be that listener. I offered my staff time off—fully paid—though none took it. I realized that their grief is a direct result of their bonds with each other, with me and with the business, and simply respecting that provided a viable path forward. Accounting for bereavement is also something you should address in your employee handbook; most policies don’t account for the effect of a tragedy on coworkers, but maybe they should.

I learned that in difficult times the grief you feel is equal to the love and respect you provided. There is much we have to shoulder as business owners, and with any luck, the death or endangerment of employees won’t be one of them. So make sure you have a plan, and never take anything for granted.

Scott Pelava is a MWACA member and owns Lonsdale Auto Works, Inc., in Lonsdale, Minnesota.