Leading employee engagement when crisis is not a simulation
A view from the ground in Dubai, where everything has changed.
Heba Abd El-Hamid, vice president, employee engagement, Siemens Energy.
Editor’s note: Communications Leadership Council member Heba Abd El-Hamid is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
There is a moment, when you live and work in a region experiencing a geopolitical crisis, that feels like living in a split screen.
On one side, there is the familiar rhythm of life: morning traffic in Dubai, the Teams calls with colleagues in Berlin or Orlando, the deadlines for the high-stakes projects. On the other, there is the quiet hum of anxiety, the constant checking of news alerts and the weight of knowing that, for some of your colleagues, the abstract headlines are their lived reality; the destiny of their families.
As a communications leader, you are at the center of that split screen. Your job is to hold both realities at once. You must keep the business moving forward, but you must do it with a profound sense of care for the people who are navigating fear and uncertainty. This is not a drill. There is no crisis simulation playbook that can fully prepare you for the moment when you look at your internal plans and say, “We need to change our tone. Now.”
The signal in the noise
In a crisis, the first thing that changes for a communicator is the nature of time. Your first responsibility is to be a signal in the noise. Employees are not just looking for information; they are looking for leadership. They need to know that the company sees what they see and, most importantly, that it cares.
Our first message, sent jointly by our CEO and regional managing director to our affected and local employees, was not about business continuity. It was about safety. It led with, “Your safety and wellbeing are our immediate priority.”
That sentence was not a corporate headline. It was an anchor. It signaled to every employee that their humanity came before their productivity. It was a deliberate choice to prioritize care over business as usual, and in doing so, it began to build the trust we would need to navigate the days ahead.
What employees really need
When people are anxious, they need two things: clarity and care. They need to know what the company is doing to protect them, and they need to feel that the company understands their emotional state. It is a delicate balance. Too much operational detail can feel cold; too much empathy without action can feel hollow.
Together with the Siemens Energy regional communications team, we learned quickly that our role was not just to broadcast information, but to create a center of gravity for it. The rumor mill is the enemy of trust. To combat it, we had to provide a single, unimpeachable source of truth on our global intranet page in partnership with our security team.
The security team also established a dedicated topic on our internal social platform, Viva Engage, called “Middle East Update.” This was not just another feed; it was a commitment. It was where employees could find the latest security guidance, links to mental health resources, and official updates without having to sift through a dozen different emails or intranet pages.
We made this topic feed the single point of reference in all our leadership communications. We featured it on the intranet homepage. We drove every query there. By doing so, we were not just managing information; we were demonstrating respect for our employees’ time and attention. We were telling them: “We know you are overwhelmed. We will make this easy for you.”
The quiet work of toning it down
Perhaps one of the most critical, yet least visible, roles of a communicator in a crisis is to be the guardian of tone. While one part of the business is celebrating a project win or a new product launch, another is living in fear. A company’s internal voice cannot be tone-deaf to this reality.
We made the conscious decision to tone down celebratory language across our internal channels. This was not about canceling good news. It was about exercising situational awareness. It was about ensuring that our internal narrative felt connected to the lived experience of all our employees, not just some.
You are also managing what doesn’t get published. This is essential for maintaining the integrity of your company’s voice and the trust of your people.
Lessons for leaders in the split-screen moment
Leading a global team through a regional crisis is a test of a company’s character. It reveals whether your values are written on a wall or lived in your actions. For leaders and communicators, I have learned that a few things become non-negotiable:
- Equip your local leaders. Global messages provide the frame, but local leaders provide the context and the care. They are the ones having one-on-one conversations, checking on their team members and translating global guidance into local reality. Our CEO’s message to the leadership team was clear: Your first job is to lead with conviction and make the work clear, but it is grounded in the safety and well-being of your people.
- Balance the global and the local while maintaining neutrality. As a global company representing everyone, our internal communications must ensure that nobody takes a political stance in such a conflict. A letter from the CEO was therefore sent to all employees, providing a broader context and reinforcing our shared values. To show that the company is supporting local colleagues, this message was then localized and co-signed by regional leaders, acknowledging the specific context of their teams. It was a small change that made a big difference. It showed that we were not just broadcasting a generic message from headquarters; we were speaking to them, in their reality.
- Understand that communication is an act of care. In a crisis, every email, every intranet post, every leader’s talking point is more than just information. It is a signal of whether the company is a source of stability or a source of stress. When you create a single source of truth, you are caring for your employees’ cognitive load. When you tone down celebratory messages, you are caring for their emotional state. When you lead with a message of safety, you are caring for their humanity.
The responsibility of trust
Living in the split-screen moment is not easy. It requires a constant toggling between the strategic and the human, the operational and the emotional. But it is also a profound privilege. It is a chance to show that a large, global company can have a heart. It is a moment to prove that “we are one team” is not just a slogan, but a practice.
The strongest lesson I have learned is that in a crisis, you are not just managing communications; you are stewarding trust. And trust, once broken, is nearly impossible to repair. But when you get it right — when your leaders show up with clarity, care and consistency — you build a bank of trust and resilience that will carry your people and your company through whatever comes next.
