Like most Americans, David Shadovitz, founding editor of HR Executive, remembers exactly where he was when he learned that the first plane had struck the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
He had just wrapped up a breakfast meeting at the Hyatt hotel at the start of the second day of the HR Tech conference in Baltimore.
“I was on the way to the Baltimore Convention Center when I noticed a group of people around a television screen watching the horrific images of the plane flying into the North Tower,” Shadovitz recalls.
Tim Jordan, now an account executive for HR Tech and in 2001 a regional sales manager for HR Executive, was driving down I-95 that morning from the Philadelphia area when he heard about the first plane crash on the radio. Stopping at a rest stop in Maryland, he saw the images on a TV screen.
Conference co-chair and co-founder Bill Kutik was on stage leading an analyst panel when someone passed him a note about the first plane. He invoked a Saturday Night Live cliché to the crowd—“Talk amongst yourselves”—while he hurried off stage to get more details.
“As I walked back, I was thinking, How can I tell people something so important, so scary and so tragic?” he recalled on a podcast with Roy Altman. “He invoked a popular television show at the time. “I said, ‘How many of you are fans of The West Wing?’ You know from watching that, when someone at the podium gets a note, it’s pretty important. When someone leaves to talk about that note, it’s really damn important. So, let me do my best to tell you what’s going on,’ and I proceeded to tell them.”
There was an hour break after that session, during which time many people were searching for information and access to televisions.
Rebecca McKenna, senior vice president of brand & innovation at HR Executive and publisher in 2001, recalls “fear and confusion,” particularly as information was hard to access.
“This was a very different communications era. The internet was far less reliable, cell phones were not nearly as sophisticated and phone lines quickly became overwhelmed,” she says. “We were trying to understand what was happening in New York and elsewhere while also trying desperately to reach family, colleagues and friends.”
Longtime HR Executive writer Tom Starner got a call from his wife—on his flip phone—who shared details of what she was seeing on TV.
As the scope and danger of the tragedy became clearer, Baltimore officials made the decision to close the Convention Center and nine other local sites deemed potential terrorist targets.
“After the magnitude of what had occurred became clear, the conference team communicated to both session attendees and exhibitors that the remainder of the event would be cancelled beginning Tuesday afternoon,” he says.
Kutik recalls elbowing people out of the way at a “Shootout” session on recruiting to share the news.
“I said, ‘We all have to leave, your boxed lunch is waiting for you at the exits,’” Kutik remembers. “That’s how it went.”
By the time Jordan got to Baltimore and arrived at the expo hall, it was clearing out.
“There was an announcer on the PA asking everyone to evacuate the hall,” Jordan recalls. “This was when the Pentagon was hit, so they were not taking any chances.”
Attendees and exhibitors were asked to leave the convention center in groups, “leaving exhibit spaces, materials and belongings behind,” McKenna says.
“There was no time to dismantle booths or make normal arrangements,” she says. “People simply had to go.”
Starner says the walk from the Convention Center back to the Hyatt seemed surreal.
“There were soldiers riding around in jeeps, with guns,” he says. “Everyone on the streets was in a state of shock.”
‘There was no playbook’
With the conference cancelled came another realization, McKenna says: How would everyone get home?
Air traffic was shut down, and thousands from around the country and the globe were scrambling to leave suddenly, making the exodus a logistical nightmare.
“Some people were able to rent cars while others were able to take a train,” Shadovitz recalls. “Some drove as far as the West Coast.”
Shadovitz carpooled back to the Philadelphia region with a handful of co-workers.
“I recall the ride was eerily quiet, as everyone tried to digest what we just witnessed,” he says. Starner—who gave up his room to people who had already checked out of the hotel and were stranded—rode home with a number of HR Executive salespeople, also saying there was “almost dead silence” on his ride.
Jordan remembers the unusual scenes around him when he drove out.
“It was really odd getting out of Baltimore; there were police and military with machine guns running around,” he says. “It was not something I had ever seen before.”
Despite the “fear and confusion,” McKenna says, it was also a moment where people joined together—sharing rooms, rides, reassurance. She packed her own car with attendees and drove them north, with several West Coasters staying at her own house in the Philadelphia area until they could find flights home.
“Across our conference community, people did whatever they could to help one another. We helped people find transportation and places to stay. We shared whatever information we had,” she says. “There was no playbook for what we were experiencing. There was simply an instinct to take care of one another.”
A changed profession
The impact on HR was immediate, Shadovitz says.
That year’s conference was held during the post-dot-com boom and pre-cloud era, with a focus on integrated HR systems, employee self-service, the rise of online recruiting and web-based HR portals. Suddenly, after Sept. 11, Shadovitz says, the spotlight for HR expanded, as organizations were confronted with new questions about emergency preparedness, workplace security, grief counseling and trauma support.
George LaRocque, founder of WorkTech, told HR Executive at the 20th anniversary of 9/11 that the attacks significantly transformed HR’s focus.
“Today we are more aware of mental wellness, the employee experience and putting the employee first,” LaRocque says. “When there’s a crisis, it can bring out the best in people, and I think in the workplace, that’s what I saw 20 years ago. And that’s what I’ve witnessed globally now: The conversations are about individuals, teams and their wellness and how we are supporting them.”
It was a spirit that was visible during HR Tech. Anyone who works in HR is focused on people—and that transformed from being a professional concept to a “deeply personal” one on Sept. 11.
“Twenty-five years later, as we remember the thousands of lives lost that day and the families whose lives were forever changed,” McKenna says, “I also remember an HR community that came together during an unimaginable moment. When everything else suddenly seemed uncertain, people took care of people.”
The post 25 years later, how 9/11 changed HR appeared first on HR Executive.
This article was originally published on HR Executive. Click below to read the complete article.