Employers - How to plan for bird flu

How will you manage your business if an flu pandemic occurs? Do you have flu pandemic plans?
We have already outlined some factors that will be pertinent to pandemic planning in the food supply sector. here we look at some more general issues.

First lets deal with the solution that most people think of first. Asking staff to work from home.
This may be feasible for organisations if home working is already an established practice and in particular if there is already the IT infrastructure to support this. For organisations which require staff to be based on the premises this is less of an immediate solution however.
If you are planning for this you need to be aware of some issues in managing this strategy for maintaining business continuity during a pandemic.

Many other companies and organizations are likely to try to also arrange for staff to work from home. These staff as well as working are likely to want to use their internet resource to communicate with friends and family about the impact of the epidemic.
You must anticipate that a flu pandemic will strain the infrastructure of the intranet and that there will be a great demand for intranet resources. Individuals and companies may need to restrain themselves from surfing high-bandwidth sites, such as YouTube if the Internet is to continue to function. Failing this it is possible that governments may be forced to limit Net usage during a pandemic.

In 2006, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, a group of telecom and government officials conducted a pandemic exercise based on a hypothetical bird flu outbreakin central Europe.

The scenario assumed total absenteeism of 30% to 60% and absentees trying to work from home. This would have overwhelmed the Internet and so building an assumption of business or organisational continuity based solely on staff working from home is probably untenable.

You should not completely discount home working from your flu pandemic planning but you should also not assume that productivity will be unaffected or that this will be an unproblematic solution.

Factors to consider in Business planning for a flu pandemic.

Most of all don't assume that your business or organisation will operate as normal. You should identify the core activities of your business and be prepared to retrench to them. You might find it useful to plan for staged retrenchment linked to differing levels of staff absence in different sectors of you business.

1) You should assume staff shortages, through employees taking time off ill, to care for others, or to avoid infection, at the 30% to 60% level - 50% is probably a reasonable planning figure.

2) You should not assume that you will be able to find cover for these absent staff.

3) Don't assume home working will maintain your business uninterupted - it will provide some insurance but may be subject to internet overload issues. Factor in additional cost for home-working for those unable to attend work. Look at alternative methods of communication, including web casting and video conferencing. Reconsider policies on flexible working and home working and have alternatives ready that can be triggered if a pandemic strikes.

4) Build in the cost of stringent health & safety policies and procedures for preventing spread of the virus .

5) Factor in public transport disruption making it difficult or impossible for staff to get to work.

6) Consider and plan for problems caused by disruption to your supply chain.

7) Dont panic your employees but do inform and consult employees about your plans. Make them aware a plan exists and inform them what to do if the pandemic occurs.

8) Involve your employees in the planning - they may come up with good solutions.

9) Identify and keep records of employee skills and capabilities to assist employee redeployment if necessary.

10) Identify how you will monitor pandemic progress and have trigger points in your plan linked to pandemic severity.