Ebola: An HR, recruitment 'worst case scenario'

Shortly after the Ebola outbreak turned into a full-fledged crisis, the International Medical Corps’ 30 open positions had ballooned to 300. To keep up with hiring demands to contain the epidemic in West Africa, human resources staff has tripled at the humanitarian nonprofit’s headquarters in Los Angeles, while its international HR and logistics teams have doubled, Brandon Berrett, director of international human resources and recruiting at IMC, told Devex. The organization — which regularly employs approximately 300 employees working in almost 30 countries — is expecting to have added several more hundred staff by February 2015 and currently has about six full-time recruiters dedicated to sorting through resumes in response to the call for professionals to help fight the Ebola outbreak. It’s an extraordinary challenge — particularly from a recruiting and HR standpoint — for everyone, Devex learned from an HR manager for a U.N. agency that is also recruiting for positions on the ground The response includes interventions like clinical care, logistical support, proper surveillance, effective community outreach and safe burials. At the same time, a similarly massive effort is going on behind the scenes to identify the right talent, and then transport these specialists to affected countries quickly, keep them safe all while navigating shifting guidelines, flight restrictions and necessary logistics like quarantines. In view of the unprecedented complexities of the current epidemic, mounting an effective response to the epidemic is a daunting administrative and operational task. “For the first six weeks, the troops were very fatigued,” Berrett said of the initial hiring response to the outbreak prior to staffing up the HR department. “Now it’s all hands on deck, every single department has been circulating and working on this.” The U.N. system, too, is working together to staff up, according to one HR manager. Unanswered questions Despite the many high-risk, frontline positions advertised, the recruitment challenge does not lie in number of applicants. In fact, IMC has received thousands by reaching out to its university partnerships and working through groups like the American Nurses Association and the International Council of Nurses. But Berrett has made offers to many people who have backed out at the last minute — which he said isn’t surprising given the health risk of the positions combined with a media frenzy. Right now, it’s about making people feel comfortable about getting on the plane, said Berrett, who schedules 90-minute calls with future frontline health workers to talk through concerns and logistics with IMC field staff, technical experts and several HR representatives. “We talk about what it’s like to get picked up, show pictures of housing,” he said. “We are going to take care of them.” But questions like: “If I get Ebola, what will happen to me?” are increasingly hard to answer with the limited availability of commercial flights and increasingly complex travel bans. “You are putting yourself truthfully on the line,” Dr. Lance Plyler, a physician for Christian humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse who was on the ground treating Ebola patients in Liberia until mid-August, told Devex. “You see the kids dying by themselves in Ebola treatment units — that’s what Ebola does, it isolates … you're scared, but you can overcome your anxiety to do what you’re called to do.” An ever-evolving strategy With the number of applicants less of a problem, Berrett explained that it’s now more about understanding whether the candidate is qualified and grasps the risks and what it will mean to work in that type of environment. He currently looks for proven ability to work in Liberia or Sierra Leone, which means a candidate will have worked in the field before, such as a registered nurse who has treated victims for a certain disease, a psychosocial professional with experience in Afghanistan or an ambulance driver with tours in Iraq. “One, I don’t want to send people out who are going to fail,” Berrett said. “Two, I want to send people that are going to complement what’s currently out there right now.” The outbreak also stirs up big questions when it comes to policy, like amount of time in-country, staff wellness and security and post-deployment plans. Samaritan’s Purse, for example, has implemented a policy to isolate all returning staff in undisclosed locations — strategically located near health facilities with capacity to treat Ebola — for 21 days, with a requirement to monitor and report their temperature four times a day. And on top of that, there is the detailed structure with which staff need to be deployed — calculating how many are working in each Ebola treatment unit down to the hour. It’s important to take a hard, realistic look about when you can get people on a plane home, or how they get moved around at all, Berrett said. Even going on rest and recreation presents a new challenge when many countries have chosen to close their borders to those traveling from Ebola-affected countries. Berrett currently asks questions like: “Does it look like our carriers can get in-country? What resources, support and availability is there for them if they are from the United States, Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle East?” The organizations is putting guidelines in place that it might not have done previously, he said, such as requiring mandatory vaccinations, when staff previously had a choice on whether to receive them or not. “Decisions are changing on a daily basis,” he noted. Staff returning to the United States are now required to reroute into one of five identified airports where extra screening measures are in place. Meanwhile, Ivory Coast in early October reopened its borders with Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia after closing them in August, which Berrett noted would be important to know in case of the need for a rest and recreation location. Every day brings a new question, according to one U.N. recruitment head who pointed to the need for flexible policies and a quicker approval process to be able to take on questions like where to immediately evacuate people if they are ill, or how to manage the psychological toll such work can have on staff. The questions can only continue to mount. According to statistics released on Oct. 25 by the World Health Organization, the number of Ebola cases has now crossed the 10,000 mark, with nearly 5,000 recorded deaths. “I think what this told me is that however equipped I thought we were with emergency recruiting and staffing, we need to try to forecast worst possible scenarios,” Berrett said. Check out more career advice stories online, and subscribe to Doing Good to receive top international development career and recruitment news.