Death Comes to Work
After a plane crash killed my fiancé, I trained to help companies deal with tragedy.
By Carolyn Coarsey

(FORTUNE Small Business) – Having grown up in a small Louisiana town and attended college nearby, I entered my 20s with a desire to see the world. The only way I knew how to do that at the time was to become a flight attendant. In 1972, I took a job with now defunct Eastern Airlines. Six months later Eastern flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades, and we lost 101 people, including two flight attendants. Five of the flight attendants survived, but they--and all our employees--were urged by management not to talk about the accident.

Eastern Airlines had two more major disasters in the next five years. Each time the message from the top was that Eastern employees should keep our mouths shut to the public and with one another. I was distraught that we knew very little about how to help our fellow employees who had survived the crashes. And I could only imagine how bad it was for the victims' families. Unfortunately, I found out.

In 1985, I became engaged to an executive in the travel industry. Later that year I went to pick him up from the airport and heard that his plane, Delta flight 191, had crashed. My fiancé was dead. I wandered around the airport in total disbelief, unable to comprehend that this was happening to me. And I was incredulous that airline employees were still directed to avoid the public and say nothing. I wondered to myself that horrible day, "What is the role of people who work for an organization when there's a tragedy?"

I went back to school and earned a Ph.D. combining education and psychology. My doctoral research--funded by the Federal Aviation Administration--showed how employee behavior following a disaster has an impact on survivors. Now, as a consultant with my own business, Higher Resources, based in Blairsville, Ga., I teach businesses large and small--and not just airlines--how to respond when disaster strikes.

The first thing anyone wants after any kind of death or injury in the workplace is information. Can you tell me if my loved one was involved? How soon can I be reunited with my loved one--even if he is dead? Can you get me there? When I lost my fiancé, airline employees were telling people to go to the hospital and look for survivors. They did not know what their role should be, so they abandoned us.

It has become a common mistake to think that people always need counseling. After 9/11, many businesses thought they could simply pass out the phone number of a bereavement counselor to victims' families and surviving employees. That made people angry. What they really need immediately after a trauma is often simple things: food, transportation, lodging. They need to be with their families. They need to call home. They need to regain their equilibrium, and later, if they want counseling and support, that's a personal choice.

Ownership of the situation is key. I've seen the president of a company notify a widow or mother personally of an injury or death. When the head of an organization says, "I'm here to let you know what happened and to see your family through this," families feel connected to the company and can see it was truly not the firm's intention to harm them. There are always legal settlements and insurance payments with any disaster, but when representatives from the company approach families with acknowledgment and support, families typically do not look for a fight in court. Emotionally family members still have to work through pain and loss, but they don't have to work through anger at and resentment of the company on top of it.

We don't have to farm out the job of dealing with the public to people with MDs and Ph.D.s. When customers and the employees see the humanity of the company--as opposed to viewing it as a perpetrator--that makes all the difference.