Inside this issue:
- What the AWS outage exposed about HR readiness.
- How six leaders kept their teams running.
- What to fix in your HR setup today.
Hey Folks,
In March 2026, nearly 60 AWS services went offline across the Middle East.
Suddenly HR couldn’t run payroll, track attendance, or get anything approved. And employees were asking questions that nobody had answers to yet.
The organizations that held up were the ones that had done the prep work earlier.
We spoke to six HR leaders from those organizations across the Middle East to understand what they did differently. Their experiences of navigating disruption became the foundation for this playbook.
Here’s a small part of what they shared.
When everything feels urgent, sort it first
All six leaders converged on the same framework when things got chaotic. Sort everything into three buckets and move fast.
Having this sorted in advance gives every manager a framework to act without waiting on HR for every call.
The first 72 hours are won or lost on communication
Every leader said the same thing. Reach out before your people start filling the silence with their worst assumptions. You don’t need all the answers. You just need to show up and keep showing up.
Your system is only as good as how it’s set up today
Three things to get right before disruption hits:
- Access: If your payroll or HR data is locked to one person or one device, that’s a single point of failure waiting to happen.
- Automation: Manual processes depend on people being available. In a crisis, they won’t always be.
- Training: Having the system is not enough. Your team needs to know how to actually use it when it matters.
There’s a lot more in the playbook, including what all six leaders would do differently and a readiness checklist worth going through before you ever need it.
