Katrina Aid and Relief Effort (KARE) Lessons:
Looking Back and Moving Forward
Tracey E. Rizzuto
Author’s Note: The author would like to acknowledge and thank the Katrina Aid and Relief Effort (KARE) taskforce leaders and project team leaders for their contributions and insights provided in the development of this article.
In fall 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the leadership of SIOP (Division 14) struck a new course in the association’s history by calling on its membership to mobilize and deliver desperately needed resources to people and businesses affected by the storm. The Katrina Aid and Relief Effort (KARE) became SIOP’s first outreach taskforce designed to deliver pro bono business consulting services with the goal of aiding disaster recovery. Since its inception, KARE has received commendations from the Louisiana State Senate (Senate Resolution No. 118, Regular Session 2006), the American Society of Association Executives, and the Center for Association Leadership. In addition, KARE recipients have made numerous strides toward restoration and expressed gratitude for services—some wishing to pursue long-term partnerships outside of the initial KARE contracts.
Given these successes, it is important to reflect on the lessons learned from the KARE experience and to consider how SIOP and I-O psychologists might better position themselves to provide future outreach services. In doing so, there are a number of questions to consider. First, what role(s) can I-O psychologists play in helping people and businesses recover from disasters? How can SIOP support emergency response efforts? And, what developments in science and practice are needed to increase the value of our services and the visibility of our profession in the realm of crisis management?
To address these questions, archival records maintained by KARE were examined, along with data from interviews conducted with taskforce leaders and project consultants. Findings from this investigation are categorized into two taskforce domains: KARE administration and project team management. A summary of the challenges and lessons associated with these two domains is discussed, and suggestions for future outreach efforts are provided.
KARE Administration: Embarking on New Territory
Operating without an association precedent, SIOP leaders had to transform the vision of a volunteer consulting effort into an outreach taskforce that functions with a professional affiliation (within SIOP and the American Psychological Association [APA]), leadership structure, and a defined set of goals (i.e., identify volunteers; provide services). John Kotter’s (1990) Change Phases Model outlines the sequence of actions that followed (sense urgency, coalition-build, define vision, empower, secure wins, restructure, and anchor). First, given the time-urgent needs of the affected communities, a coalition of taskforce leaders had to quickly develop a vision that articulated a geographic region of focus (all communities or concentrated areas), the type of services to be rendered (a focus on business issues only or in combination with personal needs—housing, healthcare, etc.), and the professional partnerships desired to deliver the broadest range of services with the greatest impact. As a result, the taskforce developed a partnership with APA Division 13 (Society of Consulting Psychology) designed to provide business-related services to affected organizations in the greater New Orleans metropolitan area.
KARE consultants were empowered to distribute services to client organizations through three mechanisms. First, business workshops were used to disseminate information on a variety of employment topics including stress management, recruitment, and selection. The workshops also provided a forum to conduct intake assessments of organizational needs, deliver one-time services to client organizations, and assess the potential for long-term consulting projects. Second, volunteers from both Divisions 13 and 14 were matched with clients based on the fit between their consulting expertise and the organizations’ needs. A KARE Web site was developed to facilitate project team matches, solicit volunteers, and advertise services to prospective client organizations.
Early contacts with client organizations were made through the Web site and informal networks across the two divisions. Later, contacts were coordinated with the help of local professional associations (e.g., Human Resources Management Association) and the media sources, which enabled the third mechanism for providing help. Aided by a local public relations firm, taskforce leaders were able to offer advice and support to numerous organizations through the broadcast of television and radio interviews and print article distributions in the New Orleans area.
The first workshop was hosted in New Orleans during the 2006 APA convention. Despite the interdivisional partnership and APA’s support for KARE, APA was initially hesitant to formally authorize these workshops. After weeks of dialogue regarding service accountability and statutes for psychological practice in the state of Louisiana, KARE made a pact with APA to ensure legal compliance for all services rendered. Signed waivers of responsibility for APA and all of its divisions were obtained from every person attending the workshop and receiving consultation. A great deal of time and energy was devoted to building this foundation of KARE. Finally, 7 months after the storm, the first KARE project team began a partnership with a New Orleans-based business.
Lessons Learned
What was learned from this experience? A seemingly simple vision (i.e., mobilize volunteers and render services) involves a number of logistical “start-up costs” that cannot be quickly expended for a timely emergency response. For this reason, future emergency outreach efforts would be best served by an intact committee that preserves an organizational structure, volunteer network, professional partnerships, and an institutional knowledge for navigating legal and logistical challenges. In the fortunate absence of a major crisis, the committee can strengthen its response capability by pursuing collaborative partnerships that complement and extend the range of services that can be provided by I-O psychologists (e.g., APA’s Disaster Response Network (DRN); the American Red Cross). Future outreach efforts would also benefit from the development of a financial base that supports crisis management research and outreach. Although once in operation, KARE was able to generate small donations from division members and private organizations to offset operating expenses (e.g., KARE workshop facility, advertising, and printing fees, etc.), two steps for future planning include: (a) providing an option to donate to disaster outreach in the annual SIOP membership renewal process, and (b) creating SIOP initiatives to encourage I-O researchers and practitioners to collaborate on private, state, and federal grant activities that support crisis management science and practice. Donations and grant funding generated before disasters occur will enable outreach efforts to provide assistance sooner, to more organizations, and for longer durations by offsetting costs associated with longer term client care (e.g., travel subsidies for volunteers). In addition, calls for research by the SIOP community may help to fill existing voids in the crisis management literature and to inform future outreach efforts.
Another administrative lesson from the KARE experience is the importance of local ties to people and professional networks in and around disaster-affected areas. Insights from local volunteers and associations helped KARE to better understand the regional business culture and the laws and norms that guide practice, and to tap into informal networks for communication and commerce. Reach into communities can be achieved by raising SIOP’s national visibility in the matters of crisis management. By educating business and government about the relevance of our expertise toward disaster response, recovery, and planning, SIOP members may be called upon to serve their communities in the event of crises. In addition, by strengthening the presence of regional SIOP associations, a geographically distributed network of volunteers can be developed to aid outreach, nationally and internationally.
Project Team Management: Consulting in Extraordinary Circumstances
An important feat in the change process is to secure “wins” or steps toward goal accomplishment (Kotter, 1990). Since 2005, KARE project teams have a number of winning accomplishments. They have provided consultation to 10 New Orleans-based client organizations from a variety of industries and sectors and ranging in project scope from one-on-one coaching to the implementation of an online recruitment and selection tool. Despite these successes, there were many challenges to managing projects teams under such circumstances. One obstacle is the state of the crisis management literature. To date, very little empirical research addresses organizational practices in the context of large-scale disasters. Issues pertaining to disaster recovery timelines (e.g., how soon after crisis can organizations absorb consulting services?), typical recovery needs (so many needs, too little time), and the applicability of ordinary business practices and tools remain unexplored. Consultants had to rely on intuition and experience to guide decision making and service delivery under these unpredictable circumstances.
Another management challenge was resource scarcity. Project teams, ranging in size from one to five volunteer “consultants,”1 were limited in the amount of time they could contribute to project work, personal financial burden they could endure, and expertise the team could offer. First, project teams had no prior working history with each other or with the client organizations. Volunteers had to quickly become oriented to their team members’ expertise, styles of practice, and professional capabilities. Because most operating expenses (e.g., travel, lodging, communications, etc.) were paid out-of-pocket by the volunteers, there were few opportunities for members to meet, build working relationships, and develop strategies for fulfilling client needs. Furthermore, although there was an abundance of support and willingness to help among KARE volunteers, experienced and licensed practitioners were in short supply. As a result, project workloads were unevenly distributed contributing to strain and fatigue among some project members. In addition, despite efforts to match consulting expertise with client needs, some volunteers had to practice outside of their repertoire of services, placing greater demands on their time, effort, and their needs for new learning. Better strategies are needed for (a) utilizing the expert knowledge of seasoned practitioners and the willingness of early career professionals, and (b) brokering consultant-client matches.
1 Not all volunteers were consultants by occupation. Some were academics, graduate students, and other Division 13 and 14 professionals.
To that point, many project team complications seemed to stem from the initial client intake assessment. This assessment was used to identify client organization needs and was the basis for matching consultants with project teams. A graphic of the organizational needs reported in the fall of 2006 is presented in Figure 1. The assessments were typically conducted with a single client representative who gave entrée into the organization—usually small business owners or human resource directors. Although the intake assessment was derived from established instruments commonly used by KARE consultants in typical intake settings, the validity of the instruments for use in atypical (disaster) settings is not known. The accuracy of the data that resulted from these initial intake assessments could have been affected by a number of factors. First, most client representatives found it difficult to assess the magnitude of damage to their organizations because their crisis repercussions were embedded within the context of a larger humanitarian disaster. Even 1 year after the storm, the long-term ramifications for the state of Louisiana were still unknown (e.g., population displacement, economic welfare).2 When organizational crises are nested within broader disasters, organizations cannot rely on the assistance provided by external entities (e.g., state and local governments and volunteer groups) to help stabilize operations—an assumption often made in crisis models (Smith, 1990). Second, organizational needs were so numerous—ranging from the personal matters (e.g., trauma, loss of homes and family) to basic infrastructure and operations (e.g., rebuild facilities, secure staffing)—organizational representatives often reported service needs based on pre-storm referents (i.e., the initiatives that were prioritized before the storm). In many cases these referents were no longer considered “high priority” or were overly ambitious given the new state of organizational instability. Over all, although the data gathered during the initial intake assessments provided a helpful glimpse at the needs being expressed by organizations in the affected region, it did not help consultants and clients sufficiently narrow project scope and priority under such unpredictable and unstable circumstances. In some cases, data from intake assessments affected KARE’s ability to broker well-fit consultant-client relationships, led to inaccurate estimates of project timelines and priorities for organizational needs, and distorted perceptions of organizational support for KARE projects. As a result of these miscalculations, some projects waned, while others exceeded the commitment expectations of project members and ultimately contributed to member burnout, fatigue, and withdrawal from project teams.
Figure 1. Interest in KARE services reported by client organizations during the fall 2006 intake assessment.
2 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the latter of which struck Southwestern Louisiana less than a month after Katrina, caused major damage in coastal counties and parishes spanning five states. In response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) designated 433 counties and parishes as in need of federal assistance (FEMA, 2006).
Lessons Learned
A number of lessons can be learned from the experience of these project teams. Although project team diversity presented some challenges at the team level, it was critically important to KARE’s overall success. Having a broad range of expertise within the KARE volunteer base increased the potential for creating a strong consultant-client fit. Also, by having teams comprised of local and distal (“non-local”) volunteer members, fresh ideas for problem-solving could be combined with insights into local values, business norms, and the status of broader recovery efforts in the region—a perspective often hard to gain from state and national media alone. Furthermore, having local volunteers “on the ground” enabled frequent in-person contacts with the client organizations, which helped to build trust, rapport, and communications between the client organizations and project teams. Future outreach efforts would benefit from strengthened ties to regional SIOP chapters and other professional business and psychology associations. These networks can help SIOP restructure its outreach resources and anchor them to communities that can provide support to project teams and outreach efforts (Kotter, 1990).
Second, more research is needed to examine the validity and utility of traditional approaches to organizational needs assessments in the disaster context. Intake instruments and procedures that are designed to assess the needs and priorities of organizations undergoing large-scale, unplanned, and highly emotional change should be explored. In addition, the practice of replicating needs assessments at multiple organizational levels and at different points in time may improve data reliability and accuracy. In sum, SIOP professionals can better position themselves for future outreach efforts by extending the scientist–practitioner model toward the development best practices for crisis management techniques, measures, and interventions.
Conclusions
Among the numerous insights gained from the KARE experience, there are two reassuring conclusions for SIOP professionals. First, the knowledge, skills, and abilities that our professionals can offer are greatly needed and sought for crisis management and disaster recovery. This is evident in the continued interest KARE has received from local businesses, state officials, and national crisis management groups. Given our professional competencies in organizational behavior, leadership, training, personnel management, among many others, we have a great deal to offer this important and timely workplace issue. Second, SIOP professionals offer unique knowledge and skills that can address existing voids in the science and practice of crisis management. Although there are established professional groups that mobilize during crises to respond to individual physical and mental health needs (e.g., Red Cross; DRN), as well as private and federal initiatives to finance recovery and protect property, to date there are no established professional groups to help businesses address the human component of organizational recovery and disaster prevention. Moving forward, SIOP and I-O psychologists can play an important role in serving that need.
References
FEMA (2006). Federal Emergency Management Agency: Hurricane Katrina Information. Retrieved at http://www.fema.gov/hazard/hurricane/2005katrina/index.shtm.
Kotter, J. (1990). A force for change. New York: The Free Press.
Smith, D. (1990). Beyond contingency planning: towards a model of crisis management. Industrial Crisis Quarterly, 4, 263–275.
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