If it ever happens to you that one of your employees is kidnapped or goes missing in difficult or complicated circumstances, you need to already know what to do and how to react. At the point that the incident starts it is too late to start preparing. And when HR professionals are always so busy focusing on pressing operational issues or trying to snatch some strategic thinking time, it is often difficult to conceive that time spent planning for something that may never happen is well spent.

If your employees travel to some Middle Eastern countries, Africa or some Latin American countries, then making time to plan should be somewhere on your to do list. Certainly working for my last company our plans paid off when one of our employees contacted us from Dubai during the night to say that he was about to be either arrested or kidnapped, he didn’t quite know what was happening and it was a garbled quick message. Something, however was clearly wrong. “If I don’t contact you in a few hours then I will need some help. Come and get me”. He sounded very frightened. After the call he went missing for close to three days.

In the end, this event ended without too much harm after he was rescued from the ‘Dubai authorities’ after a harrowing 3 days of detention.

But what did we learn from this incident?

Setting up an incident room: this needs to be done quickly and with the right team. You need to take control and inform everyone that you are the incident room manager. Taking control and keeping control is incredibly important. And if you are not the right person to do the job get someone else to do it straight away.

You will need a note taker and someone to take actions away from you. The incident room will of course need to be shaped in terms of membership to fit your company and the specific incident, but in all circumstances it must be kept small. Anyone who is not part of the incident team should not be allowed in the incident room without a specific purpose. Be prepared to ask people to leave.

The location of the incident room is also very important as it obviously needs technology and communication but also privacy and it is my suggestion that it should not be too close to senior management.

Dealing with senior management: Managing senior management such as the CEO and other senior colleagues is an art at all times, but during an incident two themes should be in the forefront of your mind. Firstly, you need to keep the senior management informed. Set durations and deadlines when you will communicate an update. At the start of the incident the interval between updates should be quite short and should only be extended as the incident continues. Once an update deadline has been set it must be kept, whatever is happening.

The second matter to bear in mind is that you need to be prepared to ask senior management to let you get on with the job. CEOs and other senior managers are successful because they naturally like to control things and many leaders believe that they can do everything better than everyone else. Running an incident room can not be done by committee and needs one competent person in control. Control needs to be asserted and challenging interference is best done early.

Managing family: Sometimes an incident will come to your attention via the family. If this is not the case then you will need to select someone to visit the family. The choice of who you might send is important. I recommend that you send a cool unemotional colleague perhaps an INTJ Meyers Briggs profile.

Getting help: Keep escalating the response until the facts are known or until you have recovered your employee. You should have kidnap and ransom insurance in place and if you do not know the details of your insurance, then right after reading this article I suggest you go and check that it is in place. If your company does not have insurance then your insurer or companies like Hiscox Insurance can easily supply you with cover. Make sure that your insurance covers ‘rescue’. Companies such as International Risks are highly skilled and specialised and you should seek support as soon as you have a concern that something has gone wrong.

Working the family contacts: Understanding the contacts and social profile of the missing employee is a valuable technique. Find out if they are related to any politician or diplomat or media professional. Contacts such as these are invaluable in galvanising support.

Call the embassy or diplomatic office: Calling the embassy or diplomatic office should be high on your list of initial actions. Speak to the consular himself/herself, prepare for the call and only provide the facts. The better you perform during this first call the more likely it is that you will gain support.

Keep on top of the facts: Keep working the known facts and track back and keep reviewing and checking the information that you have. Much of the information that will have been supplied to you will later be proven to be incorrect. Every relevant piece of information needs to be checked consider sending someone to check everything. Most if not all early information tends to be wrong or in someway inaccurate.

Conduct a psychological debrief: Once your employee has been repatriated insist on the employee and family completing a psychological debrief. You might wish to consider whether members of the incident team should also complete a debrief. Psychological debriefing will substantially reduce the likelihood of your employees suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome and is more effective if it is completed with 24 hours of the incident. Organisations such as International Risks will be able to source a trained psychologist to complete the debrief.

Celebrate and thank the staff who helped you: The incident team will have created shared memories from the event and will have bonded. A celebration and expressive thank you will help bring closure to the event.