10 Key Planning Considerations
1. Plan Development
A recent Mercer Human Resource Consulting survey of revealed that approximately 90% of the respondents from over 38 countries expect at least a moderately adverse impact on absenteeism from a pandemic and 68% expect a negative impact on profitability. However, only 47% report having a business continuity plan in place. Interestingly, in the same survey, a far larger percentage of those who responded indicated their companies had begun to address individual risks and issues.
MEDEX recommends that a comprehensive business continuity plan includes the following items, which are often absent from many plans:
- Implementation: At what points will the various stages (pre-pandemic, pandemic and pandemic recovery) be implemented? Who makes those decisions? What information sources will be used for guidance?
- Risk Analysis: Identify essential operations, supply and distribution channels, dependent relationships, staff skills, and the impact of a pandemic on critical resources. Include evaluation of the absence, disruption or interruption of those key systems.
- Enterprise Integration : Unlike a physical critical incident where operations can be shifted to another part of the company, a pandemic is likely to have a global effect. This requires that your plans reach throughout the company to all locations and at all levels.
- Pandemic Characteristics: For many critical incidents, corporate plans revolve around delivering people to the situation, empowering them with expanded authority for bringing the business back to life, and securing needed physical assets. Pandemic planning recognizes that physical assets may be unaffected, with limited or missing human resources.
2. Absenteeism
During a pandemic, many government health agencies project absentee rates between 25% and 40% for periods ranging from three to eight weeks. This compares to a rate of approximately 5% to10% for seasonal flu. If the level of illness results in the closure of schools, childcare facilities, and other public facilities, absentee rates are likely to reach the upper end of the range as families remain home to care for children. Absenteeism should be expected over a period of several weeks for each wave of the pandemic.
Absenteeism will be felt in both numbers and in key positions. Your company's plan should include decision-trees that can absorb or redirect chains of communication or authority in the absence of key individuals. The current high mortality rate associated with H5N1 infection, speaks strongly in favor of succession planning in key positions.
3. Benefit Policies
In the event of a pandemic, human resources needs to be prepared to work with a limited number of employees. In preparation of this, HR departments should be aware and make proper preparations for: skills assessments, identification of critical jobs, temporary job reassignments, occupational health and safety issues, working from remote locations, compensation, absence reporting, benefit programs and others. According to a Mercer Human Resource Consulting survey, the discussions around benefit policies and their integration into a pandemic plan remain disconnected. For many companies, this means that a keen analysis of current plans needs to be completed to ensure their adequacy for a pandemic outbreak. Read more >>
4. Business Dependencies
In today’s interdependent global economy, the effects of a pandemic will be felt by those who produce, deliver, and provide goods and services, as well as the consumers of those goods and services. Pandemic preparations need to incorporate a critical analysis of the dependent relationships possessed by your organization. These will include both domestic and international relationships in light of a pandemic’s unique global characteristics.
5. Cross-training
If employees who perform essential functions are absent for a period of time, are there others who can perform those functions on an interim basis? Part of pandemic planning will involve a skills assessment of current staff as well as an identification of essential job functions. Cross-training will be particularly important in overseas locations where the company has made the decision to relocate or evacuate expatriates. Cross-training of management staff is also a vital part of pandemic preparations, since managers and operational staff are likely to be impacted in equal proportions.
6. Employee Health
A comprehensive employee health plan which addresses procedures to minimize transmission to other is essential to protecting your people and continuing operations. Personal hygiene techniques are among the most effective steps to reducing the risks of disease transmission. These include frequent hand washing; keeping hands away from nose, mouth and eyes; covering nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing; and disposing of used tissues in closed containers. While important as a general rule for everyone, your plan should place special emphasis on people who are in routine contact with the public.
Workplace cleaning techniques should be implemented. The H5N1 virus is able to survive outside the body for approximately two days on hard surfaces. Consequently, surfaces that are frequently touched (e.g., handrails, counters, sinks, handles) should be cleaned routinely with disinfectants. Shared workspaces or resources (e.g., telephones in a call center, computer keyboard and mouse, and workspaces, shopping carts) should also cleaned frequently. Publicly accessible objects in waiting areas should be temporarily removed (e.g., telephones, magazines, books, toys or trinkets) upon determination that the relevant pandemic phase (Phase 4 in affected areas and Stage 5 for all areas, for example) has been reached. Particular attention should be paid to areas occupied by people demonstrating symptoms or diagnosed with avian flu. An area that has not received much attention to date involves shipping and receiving staff, especially as regards expedited shipments of items arriving from affected areas. You may consider a “quarantine” period for incoming items. Cleaning and receiving personnel should be protected with appropriate personal protective equipment after Phase 4 is declared.
An employee health plan will also include provisions limiting access to your facilities during a pandemic. This may be as simple as requiring employees who feel/fall ill to remain at home until recovering, or making arrangements for employees to work from home, limiting meetings, canceling group training sessions, closing cafeterias, and other social distancing techniques.
For travelers, an effective plan should include the location of preferred medical facilities, availability of antiviral medications, access to medical kits for basic needs, and ensuring that all vaccinations are current, including seasonal flu shots. Travelers should also be educated on identifying and avoiding counterfeit drugs, including those represented on the Internet or in countries with loose regulations.
7. Medical Facilities
Emerging hospital and medical provider plans are working to address the potential for becoming overwhelmed during a pandemic outbreak. As one example, the Toronto Academic Health Services Network, which includes the University of Toronto health facilities and nine teaching hospitals, is advising hospitals to plan for 50% of capacity to be consumed by flu patients. In some areas the numbers are expected to be higher. Some national health plans are designating particular medical centers for pandemic flu care.
Medical facilities around the world are also indicating that some non-emergency medical services may be curtailed during a pandemic, particularly in areas where high attack rates or absenteeism among medical providers is experienced. The impact may be broad and varied, including delayed appointments for basic care, delayed treatment or home care recommendations for injuries or illnesses, slower responses for prescriptions, and changes in policies regarding patient visitation.
For these reasons, it will be important that your plan provides travelers with information regarding overseas health care coverage, preferred international providers and access numbers for assistance.
8. Communications
Timely, accurate communications are an essential element of preparations leading up to, during and following a pandemic incident. Effective communications play a part in demonstrating the organization’s leadership, preparation, and diligence in identifying and addressing key issues involving a variety of factors and audiences. Being able to distribute potentially complex and critical information requires clear, simple, transparent messages disseminated through multiple methods, including email, posters, brochures, newsletters and website content. Effective communication will play a fundamental role in dealing with speculation, misinformation, misperception and the anxiety and confusion that often accompany them. Establish a spokesperson, so that those who look to your company have a recognized authority on which to rely for information. Information available to your employees should include clear descriptions of corporate policies regarding illness reporting, absence, special leave arrangements, telecommuting (if permitted), and other situations that may generate questions or concerns.
9. Service Interruptions
Many government and private industry plans have identified a high probability of short term interruptions of services and spot shortages of key items. While this is a well understood and tolerated component of physical disasters, it may not be as well recognized in a pandemic.
Any service or system that relies heavily on routine presence of people may be subject to disruption during a pandemic, with virtually no sector being immune. The United States Department of Health and Human Services identified eight areas subject to interruption:
- Hospitals and health care facilities
- Banks and ATMs
- Restaurants
- Telephone service
- Transportation services
- Fuel
- Food and water
- Schools and daycare facilities
A large percentage of shortages and interruptions will likely be associated with absenteeism within delivery, transportation, and shipping systems. If 30% of the population is infected, that impact will be felt, for example, among long-haul truckers and deliveries delayed. Because most fuel is transported to its final destination by ground, this could result in spot fuel shortages, now impacting people’s ability to get to work. There is also the potential for basic systems to become overwhelmed as work patterns change during a pandemic. Corporate plans, therefore, should include the need for back-up power, communications, shelter, security and equipment.
Some shortages may result from global travel limitations, including restrictions on border crossings, international air travel, or unwillingness among transporters to travel in known or potentially infected locations. This would be exacerbated by travel restrictions that strand someone neither where he started nor at his final destination. In tandem with interruptions in travel, support and communications, an effective pandemic plan needs to be able to locate, communicate with and protect the health and welfare of its travelers.
10. Travel limitations
Travel limitations may be corporately established, created by disruption of travel services, or imposed by government authorities under pandemic conditions. They may range from delays and cessation of travel to quarantine of passengers.
One of the first corporate travel planning decisions should determine when and how to establish limitations on travel. This is based upon your business needs, travel destinations, and events surrounding the illness itself. In the event that human-to-human H5N1 transmission occurs, you may want to suspend travel to that location. At the WHO’s Phase 5, you may want to suspend all travel. Within the context of restrictions that may be imposed by others, this is an important individual decision for your business. It may be a more difficult decision for a business whose existence depends on travel in contrast to one that would be only lightly impacted by a pandemic.
In the event of a human avian flu outbreak, governments are likely to invoke limitations or restrictions on travel. Members of the World Health Organization have accelerated implementation of rules that permit health screenings at borders, among other actions. While such actions are unlikely to stem the global spread of H5N1 infection, they are believed to be a short-term solution for containment. Read more >>
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