FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
March 29, 2006
Avian Anxiety
Yesteray, The New York Times devoted its entire science section to the threat of Avian flu becoming a global pandemic. It took something of an on-the-one hand, on-the-other perspective, but the stories, particularly those about the 1918 flu pandemic, definitely sent a chill down this reader's spine.
Unaddressed in the stories was the issue of corporate preparedness. What, if anything, are your companies doing to plan for ths possibility of bird flu disrupting business operations? Do you think the threat is overly hyped or not taken seriously enough?
Posted by Jennifer Reingold at March 29, 2006 9:56 AM | Category: healthcare + medicine |
5 Comments
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Most companies falsely believe that their disaster recovery/business continuity plan will save them. Not so! BCP's serve to function in the loss of a building (fire) or a computer system. A Pandemic incident won't affect the physical plant, there just won't be enough staff to adequately perform the critical business tasks. It is a completely different planning paradigm.
At our company we have prepared a pandemic response plan as an addendum to our BCP and crisis management.
Does you plan include telecommuting for employees? Is there a point early in the event where all business travel is canceled? Are employees encouraged to develop a Personal Disaster and Readiness plan? Is volunteerism encouraged? Could your employees be pressed into service as temporary health workers, or food distribution employees?
All good considerations as part of the overall response to the health event to come.
Yes.All this boils down to the Business Continuity aspect.
1.How are the governments prepared to handle this situation?
2.Are sufficient measures taken by the Health department to contain the pandemic?
3.Are sufficient supplies of TamiFlu stocked up?
4.How prepared are the corporates to this entire alarming situation?
5.Are the companies senior management taking cognisance of this fact?
Then comes the planning aspect for the people,process and the technology that surrounds the business.
It may be thought as a hype...but to me it is more of a reality and it is always wise to be prepared than to fail because of ill planning or lack of testing.
I think this is a great point to bring up to my supervisors - we always think of this kind of global pandemic as just a "health scare" and our government officials are staying on top of things. When in reality they are probably planning to live in privately furnished bomb shelters.