HR on 'The Ice': in the extreme conditions of Antarctica, there is no place for weak...

The workweeks are long--at least 54 hours, often more. Many of the jobs involve hard, even grueling manual labor. And the living conditions are rudimentary. Two employees share a room with bunk beds. In the most luxurious accommodations, community bathrooms are down the hall; in the most primitive

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These kinds of conditions--and the very name of this place, Antarctica--might lead you to believe that recruiting for jobs here would be impossible. You'd be wrong, though. Job applicants--a certain kind of applicant, to be sure--scramble for the chance to live and work at the end of the earth.

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If convincing individuals to work in Antarctica might be easier than you'd think, that doesn't mean that staffing and working with employees at the Southern Pole is a cakewalk. In this harsh environment, employee selection and training--as well as working to maintain good employee relations on-site--are vital tasks that leave little room for error.

'How Cool Is That!'

Lori Boruch, senior manager of human resources for Raytheon Polar Services Co. (RPSC), remembers when she first saw her job advertised in the Denver Post. "The ad said there was the opportunity to travel to Antarctica," she recalls. "I thought, 'How cool is that!'"

Boruch landed that job and now works at the Denver headquarters of RPSC, a business unit of Raytheon Technical Services Co. LLC and the government contractor that handles operations and support for the U.S. Antarctic Program headed by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Although no country owns Antarctica, the United States and other nations that have signed the Antarctic Treaty conduct scientific research on the continent and its surrounding islands. To support its scientists in the field, the U.S. Antarctic Program maintains two ice-strengthened research vessels, several field camps and three research stations: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Palmer Station and McMurdo Station, the largest of the three.

During her interviews for the job, Boruch repeatedly asked: "How hard is it to get hundreds of people to do this every year?" Not as hard as you might think, she was told. There are plenty of people who are attracted by the difficulties and hardships of working on the harsh continent, she learned.

The key is selecting the individuals with the best chance of working successfully and diligently through the term of their contracts--as well as providing effective employee relations that can create a successful working environment.

That is challenge enough during austral summer, when planes leave McMurdo Station every other day; it is a much stiffer challenge for those who winter over for the duration. When the last plane takes off in February, round-the-clock darkness begins to descend on the continent. At that point, McMurdo Station closes and leaving is not an option until the first planes arrive in August, heralding the approach of spring.

Why would individuals choose to isolate themselves (non-working dependents are not allowed) in such a remote, hostile environment? Who are these people?

A Breed Apart

Polar workers are adventurous, well-traveled, well-educated people, Boruch says. "Many people have decided to make this a lifestyle." Applicants are a self-selecting group. Many are in the process of making major life changes. "Maybe they are leaving corporate America; some are newly divorced," says Boruch. "They need to be at the right place in their lives and in their careers."

Some applicants are simply looking to "check off the seventh continent," she says. "They want to do it once for the experience and then move on."

RPSC recruiting manager Tamesha Johnson says, "We have doctors who apply to be janitors and lawyers who will work in the kitchen, just for the experience. And, unless you've got $30,000 to spare [for an Antarctic cruise], this program is the only way you're going to get down there."

Some husband and wife teams work on "The Ice"--always capitalized by those who live in this harsh and unforgiving climate. Bella Patel, HR project lead at McMurdo during the past summer season, says that in some cases, parents and children 18 or older work together. "We had a father and son who worked together in McMurdo. The son said he learned so much about what his father really did, things he hadn't known before."

Many who apply to work on The Ice have definite preferences for where they are stationed and when. "People either really want to go to [South] Pole [Station], or they really want to go to McMurdo," Boruch says. For some, McMurdo is "too big," especially during the summer, when the population reaches about 1,200. "They say it's too much like a big city. They prefer the solitude of Pole." Others would never go to Pole, she says, but love McMurdo. Some only want to go for the summer season, while others choose winter.

The Screening Process

Candidates for the polar program must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and have a valid passport. Other than about 300 permanent employees who work primarily in Denver, most program participants are contract employees who must pass stringent medical and dental exams to qualify.

In addition, those who winter over on The Ice are required to pass a psychological assessment.

Dr. Ron Shemenski, RPSC's medical director, says the company contracts the psychological testing out to a Denver firm that conducts a similar program for the city's fire and police departments. The test company administers the MMPI-II (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) and the 16PF Questionnaire from the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing, followed by a personal interview with each candidate.

Drug and alcohol screenings are also required, since drugs and alcohol are the biggest problems associated with the Antarctic jobs. "A couple of DUIs will keep someone out of the program," says Shemenski.

His office receives a pass/fail notice for each candidate, but no other details. NSF and RPSC refer any questions they may get from candidates who fail the exam directly to the test company. NSF sets the guidelines for the medical, dental and psychological screening programs, and reserves the right to audit the polar program, but is not involved in the details. Shemenski works hand in hand with an NSF contact to keep the agency informed about the program.

About 95 percent of those who took the psychological test this year passed. "This year, 17 people flunked out of a total of about 350 applicants," says Shemenski. The failure rate used to be higher, and he attributes the improvement to the fact that RPSC now conducts background checks on all applicants before they reach the psychological testing stage.

Candidates who fail the medical or dental exams can apply to NSF for a waiver; if it is approved, they may be allowed to work on The Ice. However, "There is no waiver for the psych exam. Sometimes a candidate is found to be suitable to go for the austral summer season, but not in the winter," says Shemenski.

Employees headed to South Pole Station must undergo an even more rigorous process, starting with a team-building course in the mountains around Denver before deploying. After a couple of months on The Ice, a team of psychologists goes in and re-evaluates the employees. "The psych team makes several trips to The Ice and conducts a debriefing after the season ends," Shemenski says.

RPSC tries to hire on a year's contract, especially for South Pole Station positions. Although they sometimes have to hire at the end of the austral summer season, this is not ideal, says Shemenski, because "people haven't been able to bond."

Alternates are selected for most positions, and, in some cases, more than one alternate is lined up, since each job is vital to the program's success. "We're always processing applications," says Boruch, who stresses that polar employees are "passionate about the science that we are supporting. Everybody realizes that, whether their work touches a scientist or not, they are there in support of science."

Polar employees know that their work makes a difference on another level, too. Because they work in such a difficult environment, they depend on each other to sustain life on The Ice.

"If the power plant goes out, for instance, that's a major problem," says Boruch. "Success depends on every person doing his or her job well."

That's a message given to applicants early in the process. The voluminous "United States Antarctic Program Participant Guide" given to each new employee spells it out in plain language: "At times everyone will be expected to work a longer than usual work week, assist others in the performance of their duties, and/or assume community-related job responsibilities. Everyone will do his or her share of the menial tasks, such as floor scrubbing, washroom cleanup, dishwashing, snow shoveling, etc. Due to the challenges that work in Antarctica presents, no guarantee can be made regarding the duties, location or duration of work. This is not an attempt to paint an overly bleak picture that will discourage all but the stouthearted. Rather, it is an effort to present work ... realistically."

The guide continues: "The objective is to support science, maintain the station and see to the well-being of all station personnel. All are expected to work as long and hard as necessary in obtaining this objective."

To further drive home the point that working in Antarctica is a serious commitment, the Participant Guide includes this ominous sentence: "In the event of a major accident that will make news headlines (e.g., plane or helicopter crash), U.S. Antarctic Program management will advise the emergency contact of those participants involved."

While the harsh Antarctic conditions can be potentially frightening, they also can crystallize the mission and purpose of each individual's work.

"There's very little hierarchy on The Ice," says Shemenski. "We all do whatever is needed. The power plant manager is probably more important than the doctor, and the cook is the most important of all!"

An HR Microcosm

New employees have been through a lengthy process by the time they land at McMurdo Station and meet Clarissa Weir, SPHR, head of HR during the austral winter season (February to October). After flying to Denver for the necessary medical and psychological tests, successful applicants receive their offer letters, wind up their affairs back in the States and fly to Christchurch, New Zealand, where they pick up their Extreme Cold Weather Gear and go through orientation before flying on to Antarctica.

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"This really is the greatest place to practice good HR," Weir says. "I have a group of employees who are in excellent health. They have free housing, free medical care and very good nutrition provided to them. I have no issues with illegal aliens, attendance problems, language barriers or accommodations for disabilities."

What's more, it's a controlled environment, and the potential HR problems are narrow in scope, she says.

But they can be deep.

Weir says that managing employee expectations is a serious issue in an environment as harsh as Antarctica. "It's important to have good pre-season expectations and to set them up up-front--it saves disciplining after the fact," she says.

Expectations are communicated from the outset. During their first 10 days on station, new employees sit down with their supervisors to discuss expectations for the job to be done. This is the pre-season evaluation. A midseason evaluation is mandatory for winter employees and optional during the summer season, and the post-season evaluation determines the amount of employees' performance bonuses.

"For some people, I think we have missed their expectations," says Weir. "This is a work camp. Some people thought it would be more like a working vacation." Last summer, says Weir, there was a woman who couldn't physically do the job and had to go home. "She just didn't know how hard it would be."

When Weir arrived for her first season at McMurdo, she found that the HR department had a reputation as a "bad place," one where employees went only when there was a problem.

To right that, Weir instituted team-building exercises and began working to improve communications. For example, she started a popular newsletter in which she profiled a department and an individual each week.

Another well-received idea was a series of employee lunches. Each week, she and the station manager met with a group of about 10 employees over lunch. The employees liked having the opportunity to talk with the station manager and express any concerns they had or ask questions, she says. "Then I made sure to act on anything that could be done. There is a huge rumor mill here, and this helps quash some of that."

Weir also worked to improve supervisor training. Last year she had to deal with someone who was a "good mechanic but a poor supervisor," she says. She managed to "nurse things along" until the season ended, but the experience pointed out the need for good supervisory training. As a result, Weir instituted a self-review, which gives employees a chance to tell their supervisors what they believe they have accomplished.

Says Weir: "I hate to see people brokenhearted, their spirits crushed," when, for instance, they get a bad evaluation they didn't expect, and maybe didn't deserve. In past seasons, she learned, there had been a lot of "writing up" of employees for various infractions. Weir changed that. Last winter there were only three disciplinary actions, she reports, and "more than 2,000 'attaboys,'" a system she set up to reward people with cash prizes for being "caught doing something right."

It's a system that can help boost morale, which is critical, Weir says. "If morale goes down the tubes, we've got a big problem on our hands."

When Leaving Is Not an Option

Although occasional conflict is inevitable when people work together, it can be exacerbated when they live and work in such tight quarters. In such a setting, personal problems tend to spill over into work.

Weir wears a pager, and if there is a problem involving an employee during the night, both she and the worker's supervisor will receive a call, and she will investigate the incident the following day.

"It's a particularly hard HR job on The Ice," says Boruch. "Here in Denver, I get to go home and decompress. On The Ice, you are on duty almost all the time."

Getting into a fight is grounds for termination. However, Weir can't simply fire someone and send him home when no planes can land or take off, so she is forced to work harder to help employees resolve problems.

"I practice pretty standard conflict resolution measures," she says. "I try to soften up both sides, and then I get them together and say, 'OK, this is what I heard.'" Peer counseling groups are available as well.

"I am convinced after working in this environment that you can reduce employee turnover," she says, "because a lot of things can be resolved, but it takes energy and commitment to do it. I think too many people take the easy way out and let people quit or terminate them."

Serious problems are rare at McMurdo, Weir says, but they have happened. During one past winter season, an employee was caught with illegal drugs, which is automatic grounds for dismissal. The employee agreed to continue doing his job, and did so successfully. He was paid for his work, but lost his bonus. When the first plane arrived, he was sent home. In another case, an offending employee was virtually grounded, spending most of his time in his room until he could be sent home.

The hardest time, all agree, is the last six weeks of a season, when a kind of "Ice fatigue" sets in. By that time, people are physically tired, tired of each other and ready for a change of scene. It's the time when little annoyances can assume major proportions. ("If he tells that same story one more time ...!")

Most people stick it out, though. "There is a [financial] risk for people who resign," Boruch says. "It doesn't happen often." Failure to complete their contracts means that employees forfeit their bonuses and are flown directly home.

"Last summer there were five to seven employees who were terminated or resigned before termination," says Patel. There were only two terminations this summer season, and Patel believes newly instituted background checks helped screen out some potential problems.

Employees who successfully complete a contract season are eligible for a performance-based completion bonus that averages 22 percent of base salary. Evaluations are based on a fivetier system, with the maximum bonuses going to those who earn the top rating.

In addition, those who work for consecutive summer and winter seasons receive a bonus of $1,000 at McMurdo and $1,500 at South Pole Station.

Another big perk is the fare credit for the amount of the ticket home that can be used toward the purchase of a ticket around the world with stops on three to six continents.

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"If people leave The Ice" prematurely, says Boruch, "it's generally because they have a family situation back home."

A Cold Addiction

Most people who complete a season on The Ice are hooked. The rehire rate for these individuals is high--about 60 percent.

One possible reason for these retention rates is expressed in a popular saying among individuals who choose the Antarctic lifestyle: "The first year, people go to Antarctica for the experience, the second year for the money. The third year they go because they no longer fit in anywhere else."

But the interpersonal connections employees forge on The Ice is perhaps a more likely reason.

If the hard conditions of Antarctica can potentially lead to frayed nerves and interpersonal conflict, they also can build deep friendships. Some who travel to this inhospitable climate find lifelong friends here, people with whom they share a special bond.

"Many people come back year after year," says recruiting manager Johnson. "And when they go home, they hold retreats back in the States."

Network administrator Dennis Hoffman returned this year to spend his 11th winter at McMurdo. He previously spent six summers on The Ice. What drew him back again and again, he says, were the friends he made and the camaraderie he shared. "I have more friends here than back in the States."

Online Resources

To read about the experiences of college interns on The Ice, and to see an online photo album that documents the harsh environment of Antarctica, see the online version of this article at www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/04June.

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The terms "remote" and "primitive" are particularly apt to describe life at South Pole Station, the coldest and least accessible of the three U.S. bases.

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"Pole people think they are really special," says Clarissa Weir, SPHR, with a laugh. "They say we haven't really been to Antarctica because McMurdo isn't on the continent." (The station is located on an island off the coast in McMurdo Sound.) Weir, a Society for Human Resource Management member, heads the HR department at McMurdo Station during the winter.

While seawater can be processed for use at McMurdo, the water supply for Pole must come from melted ice, so restrictions are stringent. Pole's senior HR generalist, Andrea Dixon, reports that "We are allowed two, two-minute showers per week and one small load of laundry per week."

Lori Boruch, senior manager of human resources for the Raytheon Polar Services Co. program, says, "At Pole, they'll get on your case if they think you look too clean. People there really monitor water use."

Living quarters at Pole are "incredibly small," Dixon says, and some employees still live in "Jamesways"--Army-type tents with metal frames and furnaces. (These will be retired when a new building, currently under construction, is completed.) The heat is hard to regulate in these tents, she says, and Jamesway-dwellers must go to another building to use the bathroom. At night, they use a big coffee can to avoid going out in the cold.

Winter at Pole is long and cold, with about six months of nonstop darkness. "It's always so cold here that going from minus 40 degrees to minus 80 or minus 100 degrees doesn't make a big difference in the way we live," says Dixon, "except that our heavy equipment will stop running at those [lower] temperatures."

Dixon says most employees voluntarily work far more than 54 hours a week, "because it takes an amazing amount of work to keep this place running in the cold and to get everything done. We all volunteer to do dishes, power plant watches, cleaning, carting 'freshies' (fresh fruits and vegetables) or mail, and many other things that we might not normally do in the real world."

RELATED ARTICLE: Like Night and Day

The difference between the summer and winter seasons in Antarctica is, literally, the difference between night and day. During austral summer (October to February), it's daylight around the clock. Your senses may tell you it's high noon, but the clock says 2 a.m. As a result, sleep problems are common, especially at the beginning of the season. To combat this, windows in employee dorms are blacked out at night.

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Bella Patel, HR project lead at McMurdo Station during the past summer season, doesn't mind the light, and she likes the fast pace and the opportunity to spend more time outside during the summer season.

Clarissa Weir, SPHR, prefers the winter season at McMurdo. During the long, dark days of winter, a light room is available for light therapy, and some people bring light boxes.

Most outside construction is done in the summer, leaving the inside work to be performed during the winter. There is more communication between McMurdo and South Pole Station, as well as with other Antarctic bases, during the summer. New Zealand's Scott Base is only about a mile from McMurdo, so there is lots of interaction with the New Zealanders (known as "Kiwis").

With about 1,100 people on station, plus tourists coming and going, McMurdo gets crowded during the summer.

Weir likes the stable population and the slower pace after the summer people go home, although slow may be a misnomer. The first year there, she says, she worked from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day putting new processes and procedures in place. Still, she came back. "This was too much fun to only do it once," she says.

McMurdo's 1,000-plus inhabitants dwarf the smallest and most remote location in Antarctica, South Pole Station. The population at Pole doubled this winter, from about 40 people to about 75. The extra hands are needed to build a new station that will house employees and science labs in one building.

Pole's senior HR generalist, Andrea Dixon, will spend 13 months at the station. Fortunately, she "loves the cold and the dark."

The unique location tends to attract a certain type of high-performing employee, says Dixon. "They all seem to have an incredible innate drive to push themselves to the limit."

One example of that desire to push the envelope is a South Pole tradition, says Dixon, "which I will most definitely not be joining." Joining the 300 Club "entails employees jacking the sauna up to 200 degrees when it's minus 100 degrees outside and then leaving the sauna and running out to the geographical South Pole and back again."

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Dr. Ron Shemenski, former doctor at South Pole Station, had to attend survival school (known as "Happy Campers School") and still remembers the first day his group met.

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"We sat around in a circle and were asked where we were from. 'I've got a storage shed in Spokane,' said one. 'I've got a storage shed in Atlanta,' said another." Since many people travel extensively when they are off The Ice, he says, home for them may be wherever they are at the moment.

Network administrator Dennis Hoffman is an exception to this rule: He spends the winter at McMurdo planning renovations for his house back in Arizona. Then he goes home and gets the contractors in. For him, it's the best of both worlds. "It works out to be about six [months] on and six [months] off [work]," he says. "Most people work 50 weeks to get two off."

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Doctors who rely on "handholding" and referring their patients to specialists won't be successful in Antarctica, says Dr. Kathleen Hales.

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For Hales, though, who is spending her first winter at McMurdo Station, this is an opportunity to challenge herself. "If you're going to be here," she says, "winter is the time to be here. That's when it's most different from what you know at home."

Hales is familiar with remote locations. She gave up a rural family practice six years ago and began taking temporary assignments in different communities. In addition to living in Central America, she spent four years in Barrow, Alaska, which, she says, is about the same latitude north as McMurdo is south.

Serving McMurdo's small, fixed winter population is similar to being a doctor in a small town, says Hales, and she thrives on the intellectual and professional challenges of being isolated from the rest of the world. "The medicine is the same," she says, "so I like the challenge of a new environment."

One of the challenges of being at McMurdo is that the fastest possible ambulance time is seven to 10 days--rather than the three to five minutes many doctors in the States face.

McMurdo is a great place, she says. The accommodations and the food are better than she expected--"but it's not Pole." Deploring the fact that, except for the manned space program, there is not much opportunity today to "launch into the unknown," Hales says longingly, "I'd love to do Pole. Pole is the end of the earth."

Dr. Ron Shemenski, now the polar program's medical director, first went to Pole as the station's doctor--and would like to go back. But because he had to be evacuated in 2001 after suffering a gall bladder attack, he is now medically ineligible to return to the base. "If they won't let me go back to Antarctica," he says, "I hear they are going to Mars!"

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When Dennis Hoffman first came to McMurdo Station, in 1985 at age 27, "it was the wild, wild west," he says. "There was no e-mail, TV was rudimentary, and communications were sparse and limited. People really had to get along then."

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Hoffman hosts a talk radio show that is broadcast to the McMurdo community (the station's signal only covers a two-mile area). He gets plenty of callers, and they can go on the air if they choose. "People don't talk about work," he says, "they talk about relationships."

Despite the cold environs, employee relationships sometimes warm up significantly, says Clarissa Weir, SPHR, who heads the HR department at McMurdo during the winter season. It's common for employees to develop "ice relationships" while working in Antarctica, says Weir. "Some people manage to be discreet, but often those around them know about the relationship."

So-called "ice marriages" usually end in "tarmac divorces," says Weir. "When the plane touches down on the tarmac in Christchurch, New Zealand, the relationship is over."

ANN POMEROY IS SENIOR WRITER FOR HR Magazine.