News this week that swine flu has killed 150 persons in neighboring Mexico and at least 40 persons have been diagnosed with the same strain of swine flu in the U.S. is alarming.
Swine flu is a form of a potential pandemic flu and the first two Americans to die in the 1918 pandemic were Kansas farm brothers, drafted for WW I, and victims of swine flu. That outbreak of influenza claimed an estimated 50 million lives around the world and 500,000 in the US alone.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Centers for Disease Control are warning of a significant threat facing the world. There is not a lot executives, managers and leaders of corporations, small business and other organizations can do to prevent the possible pandemic disaster. But there is a lot they can do to prepare their organizations to avoid total business disaster.
In recent years, medical researchers determined that the pandemic flu usually comes in three waves. A relatively mild version in the spring. It will kill some, but mostly just make many people mildly ill. Then in the past, it disappeared after about two months, only to come back in the fall in full-deadly force, killing thousands and infecting millions of people.
The second wave lasts two to three months and then ends almost over-night. It then comes back the following spring in a very mild form, causing illness but almost no deaths.
While a few good companies and organizations have been preparing for a pandemic, the public and most business owners, executives and managers have turned a deaf ear to the threat.
But there is a great deal you can do to prepare, just in case, and without spending the kind of money that was spent on Y2K.
There are four key areas that you must consider:
1. Cash flow
2. Personnel Policies and issues
3. Legal Issues, i.e. contracts
4. How you are going to communicate with key audiences before, during and after the pandemic.
WHO’s Western Pacific regional director says the world is in “grave danger” and “overdue” for an influenza pandemic, since pandemics have occurred every 30 to 40 years.
The normal functions of society have been disrupted in the past outbreaks of 1957 and 1968, but nothing like the world-wide impact of 1918 with workers too ill to work, others staying home out of fear, hospitals strained to meet the demand for care and basic essentials such as transportation, water, sanitation and power were threatened.
If history repeats itself, you have a little time to prepare your business, Univeristy, non-profit or almost any other type organization before the worst part of a pandemic strikes later this year.
Hospitals and police departments and other emergency services have been planning for a couple of years, but they have been concentrating on how they are going to “do their jobs” taking care of the sick, keeping cities safe, fighting fires. But, we’ve found most have failed to plan for keeping their own operations running. If 20-to-40 percent of their doctors, nurses, officers and command staff are out sick, how are they going to carry out the rest of their plan.
Planning should proceed on these fronts:
How are you going to maintain a minimal level of productivity?
How are you going to communicate quickly and effectively with employees and vendors and customers?
Human Resources, Finance, Legal, IT, Purchasing, Transportation, Marketing and Sales all need a plan to keep the business functioning. Plan for how you are going to keep operating with up to half of your employees out sick or afraid to come to work, and knowing that some will never be back. Or, plan for when you will shut down and how you will make that decision and communicate that decision to your employees, vendors and customers.
What’s the minimum workforce with which you can continue to operate safely? When you have as much as half your workforce out sick, or afraid to come to work, what can you do to meet production demands? When a number of those sick employees never return to work, where will you find qualified replacements? How long will it take to train them?
When your vendors are facing the same sickness and absenteeism, and your delivery services are slowed by sickness, how will you maintain production?
The communication challenge is just as significant.
You need a plan in place to communicate with employees, to reassure them, if you can:
~ their jobs will be safe
~ this will end and life will return to normal (whatever that is)
~ the company will stand by them and their families if the worst happens
You will need to daily update employees, partners and customers about the progress you are making in overcoming the challenges of the pandemic.
Be prepared to continuously reassure employees and customers if you will be able to meet their needs and expectations. But, be honest. You may be slowed by the illness or work may be temporarily halted.
