BrasPine

A crisis rarely presents leaders with one good decision and one bad decision. More often, the real choice is deciding which consequences we are willing—or able—to assume.

Some decisions protect cash but increase the human cost. Others preserve jobs but may compromise the company’s survival.

This is what I learned when an external decision involving tariffs caused an immediate reduction of approximately 80 percent in our company’s revenue.

There was no transition period and little time to adjust the organization or prepare people. Within days, our plans were overtaken by a more fundamental question:

How could we preserve the business without dehumanizing the people who had built it?

At first, I believed the greatest challenge would be finding the right answers. I soon realized that there were none. We had to choose among imperfect paths and accept their consequences.

Every alternative affected cash flow, production, jobs, families, communities and the company’s ability to recover. There was no time to move slowly in search of certainty, but moving too quickly was also risky. Reducing the workforce protected the company financially, but affected hundreds of lives and an entire local community. Preserving every position was the most desirable human response, but it was not financially sustainable.

The most responsible decision was not the most generous or necessarily the least expensive. It was the one that created the best possible balance among business survival, operational continuity, legal responsibility and human impact. That balance was never perfect.

The role of Human Resources is not to make difficult decisions appear painless. It is to help the organization understand the full cost of every alternative and prevent financial urgency from becoming an excuse for human indifference.

I already believed that HR needed to understand the business. During the crisis, that belief became far more concrete. The more human our decisions needed to be, the more deeply we had to understand cash flow, production capacity, operating costs, legal risks and business continuity.

Protecting people did not begin with defending them against the business. It began with understanding what the business could realistically sustain. Without that understanding, HR can advocate for well-intentioned but unviable solutions—and an unviable solution does not protect people for long.

At the same time, the numbers could not become the only language in the room.

Spreadsheets can show the cost of a position, the savings from a workforce reduction and the financial impact of a temporary furlough. They do not show the fear of a family that depends on that income, the effect of unemployment on a community or the long-term cost of losing trust.

HR must bring these issues to the table so decisions reflect consequences that do not appear in financial projections.

The crisis ultimately required significant workforce reductions. There is no elegant way to describe that.

People lost their jobs. Families were affected. Leaders had to communicate decisions they did not want to make. The teams that remained were frightened and, in many cases, grieved the departure of their colleagues.

We sought to structure the process with dignity, transparency and respect. Leaders were prepared to communicate directly, messages were aligned, and we worked closely with unions, municipal governments and local community representatives.

We did not always have answers. Information changed quickly, decisions had to be reconsidered and, at times, the organization moved faster than our ability to communicate every detail. The pressure to act quickly often competed with the care the situation required.

Credibility does not come from appearing infallible. It comes from remaining responsible, available and consistent while navigating uncertainty—and from continuing to be present for the team.

Even as reductions became necessary, we explored alternatives for preserving jobs. One measure was a temporary furlough program with income supplementation.

Supplementing employees’ income allowed us to reduce costs while providing greater financial security to families and preserving the possibility of a faster return to work when market conditions improved.

“The real work of Human Resources begins when there is no choice without consequences—only the responsibility to understand those consequences in full.”

It was not a perfect solution, but it was a practical expression of care within the limits of what the business could sustain. During a crisis, empathy must influence not only how leaders communicate, but how decisions are designed.

Care that exists only in speeches is not care. It is intention.

Another dimension of the crisis was the need to establish an operation in another country in approximately 60 days. More than 80 employees had to be expatriated while an operational and support structure was created from the ground up.

Housing, transportation, meals, documentation, healthcare, working conditions and family concerns had to be addressed simultaneously. We had no established infrastructure, known partners or previous local experience. Even laundry arrangements became part of the business continuity strategy.

We also had to hire 120 people and train them to manufacture a product that had never been produced in that country. There was no locally available workforce with prior experience in that operation.

The strategy depended on transferring experienced employees, training the local workforce and implementing, in record time, a manufacturing operation that relied heavily on manual work. It required close collaboration between HR and the rest of the business.

This was not a traditional Human Resources project. It was a business continuity operation with an enormous human component.

On the same day, we might discuss organizational design, legal exposure, workforce costs, communication strategy and employee accommodation. We had to move constantly between strategic and operational matters without treating one as more important than the other.

Communication became another critical part of our response. During a crisis, it is not merely a corporate function; it becomes part of the management system.

When people do not receive clear information, they create their own explanations. When leadership leaves empty spaces, fear usually fills them.

We established communication routines, developed guides for leaders and maintained broader communications led by senior executives, including the CEO. We also conducted pulse surveys to understand employees’ fears, questions and where our communication was failing.

The surveys reminded us that sending a message is not the same as creating understanding. Employees experience the consequences before they understand the logic.

Communication must do more than announce decisions. It must explain the context, the alternatives considered, the organization’s limits and what remains uncertain—without offering false reassurance.

Looking back, I do not believe the true measure of HR leadership during a crisis lies in preserving every job, preventing every mistake or eliminating every painful consequence. None of those outcomes is fully possible in a crisis of this magnitude.

The measure lies in the quality of the decisions, the courage to confront their consequences and the discipline to keep the organization’s values alive when abandoning them might appear easier.

A well-managed crisis does not eliminate pain, but it prevents urgency from causing unnecessary harm.

Perhaps this is the most important role Human Resources can play during a crisis: helping the organization do what needs to be done without treating the business and its people as opposing interests—and without forgetting who will have to live with the impact of every decision.