What Happens When a Disaster Hits a Small Buisness?

At the beginning of September we experienced one of the largest hurricanes to ever hit Southwest Florida. It was a monster and it consumed practically the entire state of Florida. Tensions were high, but we had a plan. A month removed from the incident, I am feeling compelled to go back through, a post-morteum kind-of thing, and give account of how a small business, of about 300 or so employees, both part-time and full-time manages through something as devastating as a hurricane.

Did we lose business? You bet we did. About 70% of our CAREGivers and clients evacuated. Most have come back, but some have yet to return to Florida. Does that affect the finances of a small business? Like you wouldn't believe. Overall we lost a lot of revenue that we have no way of recouping. BUT, the benefit of being a people over profit business is that due to the fact that 100% of our clients, CAREGivers and staff are safe, we honestly feel like we have lost nothing. The business will return. We can never replace our people. We have never put business decisions over taking care of people in our history and certainly have no plans to change that, even during a crisis like Hurricane Irma.

Braving the Storm

Firstly, and most importantly, I have to thank my administrative team who banded together during this stressful time to continue to provide customer service, CAREGiver coordination and, in some cases, disaster relief to our many CAREGivers, clients and their families. We were directly hit by the eyewall of a category 3 storm. (See video taken from a network baby monitor placed in our master bathroom window) Was there downtime? Loss of customer service? Loss of CAREGivers? Inability to be responsive to people in need?

Nope! Because the amazing team that I am privileged to work, we kept the business running through the duration. Our staff remained safe. Some evacuated, some went to shelters but everyone checked in one another, checked in our our clients and stayed connected to our CAREGivers.

 

A post shared by Audra Iler (@audralyn) on Sep 10, 2017 at 7:55pm PDT

When a Hurricane Shows Up on the Radar

When the storm was forecasted to hit Florida, my initial thought was, "there is still a good chance that doesn't happen." Then it became inevitable that it would make landfall in Florida, but my thought was still, "the likelihood of it coming to SWFL is low." Then, on Tuesday afternoon, the path was confirmed to make a northern turn towards SWFL. I STILL remained optimistic and thought "Well, the impact will only be bad if the eye wall hits us." Needless to say, I was wrong on all accounts. As my wife evacuated to Georgia on Wednesday morning at 4:30am with our 3 children it looked pretty grim. Hurricane Irma was projected to make a second landfall as a category 4/5 hurricane DIRECTLY in our area and home. We all thank God it was not as bad as predicted.

We operate three offices of Home Instead Senior Care across southwest Florida (Naples, Fort Myers & Punta Gorda). Because we are geographically diverse, our thought has always been that a hurricane may hit one, maybe two of the locations. That way we could continue to service our clients out of the third location. But Irma turned out to be a different story. Unfortunately, we had a direct impact of the eye wall in each of our three offices. With my family out of harms way, it was time to get to work. 

The Plan

Before the Storm: The week leading up to Irma, we checked and re-checked plans for both our clients and caregivers. We tracked who would be evacuating and who was going to be in town. We set up care for clients who couldn't evacuate. We encouraged all of our employees to do what was in their best interest. Some people left. Others stayed.  

During the Storm: We stayed in touch with everyone, constantly checking on how people were doing. We did not miss a call during the entire storm. We live-answered calls around the clock, just like normal. We didn't skip a beat. It. Was. AWESOME. We had a number of caregivers volunteer to stay with clients who couldn't evacuate, providing around the clock care for them. It made our hearts full. No matter the circumstance the bond between senior and CAREGiver stayed strong. 

After the Storm: That's when the real work started. What a mess. The power was out across the counties. That means in sweltering heat, there was little opportunity for AC. As a senior, overheating is an issue. We knew this and kept it at the forefront as we made the rounds. We checked on every single client and their family members. We checked on every single CAREGiver. For people we couldn't reach on the phone, we drove to their houses. We checked on the condition of clients' homes. We helped people who weren't our clients to verify their family members were OK and had power, food and water. CAREGivers took clients to their own homes and take care of them. Staff members did the same. Our clients were our priority and it was a beautiful and unprompted by management. 

We ran chainsaws. We cleared trees. We moved brush. We formed a task force and delivered hot meals and water to seniors and CAREGivers. We took people fuel (I even siphoning fuel out of our company cars, put it in cans and drove it to CAREGivers so they could get to their shifts). Our corporate office in Omaha, NE worked behind the scenes raising money from the Home Instead network to help CAREGivers and staff members who were seriously impacted by the storms. (Just weeks prior we donated to the same fund to help the CAREGivers and staff of the Home Instead offices impacted by Hurricane Harvey. My wife said "We have to do this. This could very easily be us someday." The irony is not lost on me.) We worked with corporate to distribute contributed money to a number of our employees that desperately needed it.

Conclusion: I couldn't be more proud of this team. I don't know of another organization that cares for and takes care of their clients and CAREGivers like we do. To say that our people went above and beyond would be an understatement of epic proportions. 

Tough times bring out your true self. And this team proved how truly great they really are.

Knowing that we can weather a storm the size of Hurricane Irma gives me great confidence in what this team can accomplish! 

To the team: I saw what you did. I felt your compassion and I appreciate you beyond words. 

Home Instead Senior Care of SWFL

Need a local hurricane preparation resource that's specific to seniors that you can bookmark and share?Check out Hurricane Preparededness for Seniors. We'll be ready for the next one.