In Depth

Fear Factor

In the months following September 11, prescriptions for antianxiety medication climbed 23 percent in The Big Apple. Does your security strategy put your employees in a New York state of mind?

By Daintry Duffy

Page 5

CSOs can also call on an employee assistance program, or EAP, as a valuable source of information for the security teaman EAP can help gauge if employees feel that the security precautions are sufficient and whether security measures may be causing excess or unnecessary anxiety.

Smart security executives understand that their initiatives will stir up a broad array of emotions across the employee population and that they can't expect to please everyone when dealing with diverse groups with different intrinsic fears and anxieties. CSOs will find that the safest strategy is to play to the center and satisfy the greatest number of people possible. "When you talk about security there's a wide range of things, but it all comes back to good security staff and a good security policy," says Psynapse's Jackson. Combine that with a great communication strategy, and the majority of employees will be on your side.

CSOs who keep their fingers on the pulse of employee sentiment will have greater success realizing their security goals. "You really can encourage people to behave in certain ways," says Carnegie Mellon's Fischhoff. "But if we have plans that depend on human behavior, they ought to be realistic."