One on One With UPS COO, John Beystehner
Thursday, September 15, 2005SUSIE GHARIB: The brown trucks of UPS are rolling again tonight on the Gulf Coast. Twenty-two company buildings were damaged by Katrina. All but three of them are now back in business again. But UPS is still coping with big challenges, both logistical and human. Today, I talked with John Beystehner, Chief Operating Officer of UPS, and I began by asking him how his employees are faring?
JOHN BEYSTEHNER, COO, UPS: Well, you know, clearly that's our biggest concern when the storm hit was our people. We have 2,200 people that that live and work in the impacted area. And right at this time all but 1200 of the people are working every day. And unfortunately, at this time, we still have 138 employees that we have not heard from or been able to contact.
GHARIB: Mr. Beystehner, of the people who are working, how are they managing? How are they functioning? Do they have homes to go to? And how are they just getting back and forth to the UPS’s facilities where they work?
BEYSTEHNER: Well, you know, it really depends on the individual's situation, Susie. And I think the key thing that we're trying to do is to be as flexible as possible in terms of accommodating the needs of the individual employee.
GHARIB: But is this a dangerous situation? Are you putting your employees in a tough situation?
BEYSTEHNER: Absolutely not. That is the last thing that we would ever do is put our employees in a situation that I would never ask an employee to do something that I wouldn't do myself. In terms of the safety of our people, in terms of the areas where we are delivering, they are open to the public. And you know, we have one facility that we did not get into yesterday that we are going to need to do some decontamination work in.
GHARIB: I understand that a lot of the businesses in Louisiana and Mississippi are trying to open up and get back to normal. In your case, this is pretty speedy recovery. Did you have a disaster plan in place before Katrina?
BEYSTEHNER: Well, even before the storm hit we started working on our contingency operations. And it's really one of the things that we have to do as a service company is have active contingency plans in place and be developing them before situations develop. And really at this time, even, we are operating in a contingency mode in terms of flowing volumes to different buildings to ensure our ability to provide service to the area.
GHARIB: Companies always talk about crisis management. I'm wondering, what are the lessons that you learned from your Katrina experience and any advice that you would give to other companies on how to cope in a situation like this?
BEYSTEHNER: Well, I think the key thing that we did at UPS and that we have in place is an active crisis team. In fact, we run drills on a periodic basis. But we brought together our crisis team immediately because we knew that there were going to be, you know, it was a major disaster that was taking place. And we knew that we had to deal with the concerns of our people, of our customers as well as the communities. And that's what the team then worked on was pulling that together. And then maintaining the communications so everyone knows what everyone else is doing as well as it allows us to marshal our resources together to be more effective.
GHARIB: As you know President Bush will be addressing the nation about his plans for reconstruction in the aftermath of Katrina. What do you want to hear from him in terms of helping businesses like UPS?
BEYSTEHNER: Well, you know, I think the key thing that really needs to take place is getting the area safe for businesses to get into the area. And then it's really taking the types of steps probably that we're taking with our employees, trying to find out what the needs are of the individual businesses. Like with our employees, we're working in terms of a UPS or hurricane relief fund for our people. We're providing our people interest-free loans as well. I think we've got to find out what the businesses need to get back up on their feet.
GHARIB: All right, well good luck to you. I hope it is quickly that you are back to normal. Thank you so much. John Beystehner, COO, UPS
BEYSTEHNER: Thank you.
