10
PANDEMIC PLAN
The Wrath of Nature
Epidemics have often been more influential than statesmen and soldiers in shaping the course of political history, and diseases may also color the moods of civilizations.
—ANONYMOUS
INTRODUCTION
Up to this point, every plan has been based on an incident that adversely affected the operation of a company process—or even the company itself. These events triggered activation of the incident response plan. With work and a bit of luck, the incident’s impact was quickly minimized and the company moved on.
A pandemic requires a very different type of plan. It fits under business continuity planning as a disruption of the flow of business. Unlike the sharp suddenness of a disaster, a pandemic may appear gradually and then run for several months or even years. The disease follows its favorite season around the globe and ends up again on your doorstep—often more virulent than before.
A pandemic refers to an infectious disease that is spread by contact with people. Therefore, minimizing contact with people is essential. This might be between employees, as well as between employees and customers. For some businesses, this is not a problem. For others that depend on face-to-face customer contact, it requires a well-considered plan to minimize contact and to sanitize areas.
A pandemic affects more than people. It can change the demand for the goods and services offered by your company. If your services are offered person to person, it might reduce demand, as people seek to minimize personal contact. Are your products something that are used as people interact? Are they something used at home where people may shelter their families from others? Do your products provide something to ease the pandemic such as improved personal sanitation or face masks?
Disease has always been part of human history. Pandemics of differing severities occur several times each century. A seasonal flu outbreak is not a pandemic, even if widespread. Each pandemic is unique.
WHAT IS A PANDEMIC?
A pandemic is an infectious disease that strikes a significant portion of a population over a wide area, often over continents. The disease must be infectious (you catch it from other people). It must be widespread and not a local outbreak. This is different from an epidemic, in which there are significantly more cases of a particular disease among a specific group of people over a period of time. Figure 10-1 lists the differences between a normal seasonal flu and a flu pandemic.
At any given time, a number of pandemics for various diseases are declared. For example, HIV/AIDS is an infectious disease that spreads from person-to-person contact and reaches across continents. However, avoiding risky behaviors makes this less of a business concern. Many of the current pandemics are limited to a particular climate zone, such as the tropics.
Some health issues are not infectious, even though they can disrupt your business. For example, Legionnaire’s disease (caused by the Legionella bacterium) is not passed person to person, but can disrupt business and dampen travel to an area.
Pandemics strain the local health care system. Hospitals, clinics, and other health care organizations are not staffed for peak demand. We take for granted their availability in case we need them. However, a large number of cases pouring into them in a short time may mean that treatment for ill employees is only provided to the most serious cases.
The Spanish Influenza Pandemic in the early-twentieth century is the catastrophe against which all modern pandemics are measured. It is estimated that approximately 20 to 40 percent of the worldwide population became ill and that more than 20 million people died. Between September 1918 and April 1919, approximately 500,000 deaths from the flu occurred in the United States alone. Many people died very quickly. Some people who felt well in the morning became sick by noon, and were dead by nightfall. Those who did not succumb to the disease within the first few days often died of complications from the flu (such as pneumonia) caused by bacteria.
One of the most unusual aspects of the Spanish flu was its ability to kill young adults. The reasons for this remain uncertain. With the Spanish flu, mortality rates were high among healthy adults as well as the usual high-risk groups. The attack rate and mortality was highest among adults ages 20 to 50. The severity of that virus has not been seen again.
FIGURE 10-1. Seasonal flu vs. pandemic flu.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/index.htm.
Source: http://www.preparemetrokc.org/Know_the_Risks/difference.pdf.
WRITING A PLAN
The first step is to appoint a Pandemic Plan Administrator. Because this is primarily a health issue, this administrator is usually a staff member with a medical background. If the company lacks someone with these qualifications, then appoint a business leader. Pandemic issues involve Human Resources and Facilities management, so either might be suitable.
Define the roles and responsibilities of the Pandemic Plan Administrator in a job description. This includes details concerning planning, testing, and preparing for a rapid response to a pandemic.
Included on the companion url attached to this book is a Sample Pandemic Management Plan (Form 10-1). This sample plan is only a starting point. Customize it to meet your own company requirements. For instance, there are example risk assessments and restoration priority charts that you must replace with your own information developed in other chapters.
Round Up a Team
Writing a plan is a team effort. Anyone who is expected to execute the plan should be involved in its creation. The Pandemic Plan Administrator will require close assistance from the company’s managers of Human Resources, IT, and Facilities. If your company has multiple sites that are far apart, you may want a different team for each location. Dispersed sites provide the potential that some locations may only be lightly affected. Your company may also consider hiring a local health care adviser to assist the planning team.
In addition, consider including:
Business managers responsible for areas containing vital business functions
Union officials, if the company uses represented labor
Critical suppliers and long-term contracted labor
Logistics providers
Tie the Plan to the BIA
As always, anchor your plan on supporting the company’s vital business functions identified in the Business Impact Analysis (BIA). A primary business complication of a pandemic is extensive employee absence. If workforce attendance is low, you may need to choose between which functions will be done and which must wait. Prioritize company activities based on the highest-value BIA processes. At the height of an influenza pandemic, employee absenteeism (for all reasons) may reach as high as 40 percent.
Unlike the sharp and comparative short-term impact of a disaster, a pandemic may last 18 months or more. Sometimes an employee is ill; sometimes it is an employee’s family member. Also, the priority list of vital business functions may shift as one function is fully staffed and one with less urgency suddenly acquires urgency. For example, shifting staff to assemble goods in a factory may be a first priority, but then you need to shift the team to the shipping department to move the goods out the door.
Review Contractual Obligations
Make a list of each contractual obligation. Add them to your risk assessment. Some contracts contain penalty clauses if promised products are not delivered. Preparing for a pandemic and taking steps to minimize its impact must be completed before claiming that the failure to fulfill a delivery is beyond your control.
PANDEMIC RISK ASSESSMENT
Based on your BIA, evaluate the challenges specific to your company from a pandemic. One concern is extended absences of workforce or key personnel. However, are your revenues dependent on people-to-people contact? (Who knows what germs are on the credit card handed over by a customer?) Determine the impact of a pandemic on different product lines and/or production sites. Do your company’s products or services depend on crowds? For example, consider a hotel adjacent to a convention center. If people avoid crowds, then convention attendance will be low and food service demand will be diminished. Contrast this to a factory with little direct customer contact.
Risk management identifies the potential interruption to continued performance of essential functions, the degree of its impact, and strategies to mitigate those risks. Gather the pandemic planning team and perform a risk analysis on how a pandemic might impact your business operations. Refer to Figure 10-2 and the following list for an example of a pandemic risk assessment.
Employee-to-Employee Contact. How close to one another do company employees work? If it is elbow-to-elbow or face-to-face, then the risk of infection is high. If they sit in isolated cubicles all day long, then their contact with others is much less.
Employee-to-Customer Contact. Salespeople deal directly with their customers. Close contact is essential. Basic courtesies and business rituals, such as shaking hands, may put the sales team at risk. Other examples of risky professions are security guards, cashiers, and taxi drivers.
Contact with Infected Items. Do customers use your product and then return it? Do you work in a hotel where items that have been in contact with people are collected? Are you an airline baggage handler or even an accounts receivable clerk handling checks?
Contact from Travel. Airplanes are stuffed with coughing strangers and the swirl of germs in the cabin is enough to make anyone sick.
FIGURE 10-2. Pandemic risk assessment.
Impact on Raw Materials. You may be fine, but what if the population around a key supplier is hard hit?
Impact on Customer Demand. What if your product depends on crowds—the very thing that people are avoiding?
Companies are typically in multiple lines of business. Each must be evaluated for the impact of a pandemic (reduced employee attendance, potential supplier disruption, etc.). A good example is a contract to deliver materials to a customer as a just-in-time company. In this situation, a failure to deliver the agreed materials at the agreed time may trigger financial penalties.
Suppliers may also be an issue. Most products are assembled from many components. If any one of these is missing, then a larger product may not be assembled. We live in a global economy and materials may come from a foreign source. If that area of the globe is particularly hard hit, the local companies may not be able to provide the necessary materials. The borders may also be temporarily closed to slow the spread of infection.
Understand the Threat
Consider the various scenarios that may occur. A severe outbreak may occur in your area, in your target market area, or in a key supplier area. Could a government-ordered quarantine on the movement of people or large assemblies impact your business? Will any situation you can foresee change the demand for your product—or will the pandemic become a business opportunity?
During the height of the annual influenza season, schools will sometimes close for several days. This breaks the infection cycle. With a two-day incubation, people can now be treated so that they do not infect others. This also gives schools time to sanitize all common surfaces. However, some of your employees will stay home to watch their children until the schools reopen.
Pandemic Techniques
There are four actions that your pandemic plan must include. Each action will have its own section in your plan.
Social Distancing. Infectious disease is spread by person-to-person contact. The farther apart people are, the less likely it is that they can pass germs to others.
Sanitation. People touch many things, such as banisters, doorknobs, and vending machine buttons. These objects must be properly cleaned at least daily to reduce the passing of germs through touch.
Communications. Keep your workforce and the public informed about the pandemic, explaining what each individual should do and what the company is doing about it.
Timing. Know when to activate your pandemic plan and when to close it down.
Governments are caught in a bind. If they do nothing and disease rages out of control, then they are “idle.” If they vigorously attack the problem, they are “alarmist.” Further complicating this situation are politicians who seek to create a crisis so they can be seen as “solving” it.
Another aspect is money. In a “crisis,” money flows into public health organizations, but a pandemic really opens the flow of money. Over the coming years, expect to hear the term “pandemic” more and more often. The World Health Organization’s designation of a disease as “pandemic” focuses on its global nature rather than on its severity. The H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic of 2009 was declared when the disease spread from North America to Australia.
THE PLAN
At some point, it is time to put pen to paper. With the team well in hand, create a written plan for your company to execute when a pandemic is declared. As the plan develops, try mini-tests to validate each component and identify additional planning requirements.
Although a pandemic plan is different from other incident management plans, it should still follow the same format. State the problem (which you can refer to for events not covered by the plan), state actions to take (just guidance because each situation is unique), and assign tasks to different functional areas or team members.
Triggering the Plan
Pandemics have a beginning and an end. Identify the action that will trigger your plan. This usually depends on how dispersed your company sites are. For example, a nationwide retail chain of stores, warehouses, and regional offices might trigger its plan based on a declaration of a pandemic by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov). Companies whose operations, suppliers, and customers are located within a single geographic region (such as a restaurant chain) might trigger their plans based on their state’s Department of Health determination.
Large companies generally follow the six phases of a pandemic as published by the World Health Organization (www.who.int). This is because their operations are dispersed, they participate in international markets, and employees often travel internationally. The six phases of an influenza pandemic as described by WHO are:
PHASE I. Influenza circulates among animals, with no human infections.
PHASE II. Animal influenza infects humans.
PHASE III. Limited human-to-human transmission.
PHASE IV. Community-level outbreaks indicating a significant increase in the risk of a pandemic.
PHASE V. Human-to-human spread between two countries in the same region—a pandemic is imminent.
PHASE VI. Community-level outbreak in a different region—a global pandemic is under way.
As the number of cases decreases, the time will come to deactivate your pandemic plan. Monitor the same service that you used to start your pandemic plan for a sign that it can be ended. If you have widely dispersed sites, then each area will end its pandemic emergency based on the local situation.
Finding the Latest Information
Identify local sources of information on infections in your area. This might be the state or county Department of Health. Document these sources so their location is well known to the team. Check with these sources frequently to see how the pandemic threat is emerging in your operating areas.
Local sources will also provide information about the availability of immunizations. Pass this information on to employees and encourage them to immunize themselves and their families. Some examples of resources include:
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—www.cdc.gov
World Health Organization—www.who.int/en
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—www.HHS.gov
State sites (e.g., Ohio Department of Health at www.odh.ohio.gov)
An example of local information on pandemic flu can be found on this Franklin County, Ohio, website: http://www.columbuspandemicflu.org.
THE PANDEMIC BUSINESS CLIMATE
Will a pandemic be an opportunity for your business? For example, demand may increase if you make hand sanitizer or sell entertainment products used at home (since people may avoid crowds). Other examples might be videoconferencing companies or telephone companies that rent telephone conference numbers (as people seek to avoid crowded transportation).
The opposite would be if the pandemic damaged your business. To avoid crowds, people may avoid concerts, the beach, restaurants, malls, schools, casinos, movie theaters, or other entertainment venues. In extreme local pandemics, such public venues and assemblies may be banned by the government.
You might change the way that you conduct normal business. For example, at a college graduation, instead of shaking hands with each student, you might smile and give a “thumbs-up” or other positive gesture. Retailers may be sensitive to handling credit cards or money from someone who looks ill.
Some companies might disperse employee seating to reduce the amount of direct contact between workers or erect sneeze shields between close-set workstations. Frequent fliers might prefer to use teleconferencing. Shared workstations and cash registers should be minimized and equipped with hand sanitation.
COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
The company’s Pandemic Plan Administrator will possess more relevant information about the situation than the workforce. For this information to benefit the company, it must be shared. How this information is communicated differs according to the type of workers receiving it. In the end, the greatest coverage results from the use of multiple communication methods. For example, office workers sitting in front of computers all day long have constant access to email. Factory workers or people who move about a lot during their workday might be easier to reach through posters and individual copies of information handed to them.
It is important to also communicate with the families of employees. An illness in their household can spread to the workplace through the worker. Also, employees may lose work time tending to sick relatives. Therefore, anything to help keep the worker’s family healthy (including inoculations) will pay off in reduced absence.
Develop a communications plan to ensure that the right information is provided to the right audience in a format most likely to reach them. Overlapping delivery approaches is a good practice because, when dealing with wide audiences, everyone has their own way of absorbing information. See Figure 10-3 as an example.
Before It Strikes
The purpose of communicating before the pandemic strikes is to prepare employees for the coming disruptions. Opening this communication channel early acquaints everyone with a source of factual information that will be available for them to check (such as a website). Establishing this communication link may reduce employees’ fear and anxiety by providing information and explaining defensive measures that they and their families can take. In the absence of information from an authoritative source, people’s darkest fears will take control.
As a disease approaches a pandemic state, warnings are posted on the public health websites. Pandemics start in one place and then spread. When a pandemic is close to being declared, begin an information program for executives and for the workforce. Company executives will want to know the severity of the pandemic and how it will impact company operations. As the pandemic progresses, update this estimate at least monthly. Employees will want specific information on what the disease is, symptoms to watch for, and preventive steps they should take. They will also be interested in actions their families should take to minimize the likelihood or impact of an infection.
Depending on how your company is organized (geographic dispersion, size of individual sites, degree of person-to-person contact required), you may choose to use any one of a variety of media. Each has its own advantages:
Team Meetings. They are opportunities to provide the latest information and to hear questions and concerns from target audiences.
Email Updates. Sometimes meetings and emails are ignored by busy people, but an email has the benefit of providing the same information to everyone at the same time.
Websites. The advantage is that people can access information as they wish, but websites are passive ways to communicate and are only useful if someone reaches out to it.
Status Reports. Because they are time-consuming to prepare, status reports should be targeted narrowly (e.g., factory floor, factory office, factory supervision) and should contain succinct information relevant to the target audience.
Videotaped Reports. Videos provide visual impact but are not suitable for any fast-breaking information.
Instructional Videos. They can be used to address proper sanitation during the pandemic.
FIGURE 10-3. Communications plan.
Hotlines. A toll-free phone line can answer questions from employees and their families.
Begin monitoring various government websites closely. Determine which ones provide various points of view with minimum redundancy. Some sites will repeat what is posted on the primary national and international sites. This will help to narrow the list of sites to monitor.
Do not wait until the pandemic is at its height to purchase materials such as extra tissues and hand sanitizer. They may be in short supply and the price may be significantly higher during the threat of a pandemic.
Take advantage of available sources of information. Your health insurance provider may provide ongoing pandemic mitigation techniques. Arrange for a local medical consultation to supplement your pandemic plan.
Use your communications to form a partnership with employees for their better well-being. Begin by explaining the actions being taken by the company, such as social distancing and additional sanitation. Provide information that employees can pass on to family members about the pandemic and home treatment of symptoms.
During the Pandemic
When the pandemic sweeps through a company location, it is time to kick communications into high gear. People who ignored the earlier information are suddenly interested in detailed information. It is not unusual to repeat the same information in different formats.
Encourage healthy habits among employees through posters and emails. These topics may include the most effective way to wash hands, how to cover a cough, and how to identify flu symptoms. Encourage use of large and airy rooms instead of small “huddle” rooms for meetings. Installs signs in restrooms showing the proper way to wash hands.
During the pandemic, the information to publish includes:
What is the disease, and what symptoms should you look for?
An explanation of the different ways infectious diseases spread.
Ideas for minimizing the spread of disease specific to your workplace, such as how to sanitize your work area, dealing with customer contacts, sharing objects, etc.
Where to go for inoculations (or provide company-sponsored inoculation clinics).
Simple actions to minimize contacts that might spread the disease, such as appropriate hand hygiene, coughing/sneezing etiquette, contingency plans.
Relaxed attendance policies if you feel ill or a family member is ill.
Local Sites to Obtain Immunizations
People have their own opinions about inoculations. Some fear the sting of the needle. Others object to injecting something into their body whose long-term effect is unknown. Whatever your opinion, to minimize the potential of significant absence and the absence of key personnel, promote voluntary inoculation.
Creating vaccines requires time. As a new strain of virus appears, there is a delay of four months or longer to produce the first doses that may prevent it. In the beginning, immunizations will be in short supply and restricted to high-risk groups. Over time, they will become generally available. The Pandemic Plan Administrator can monitor the situation to be ready to arrange employee immunizations when the supply allows it.
Prepare employees for the time when inoculations will be generally available. Promote the value of these immunizations through your company communications. To minimize liability, coordinate with a nearby health care provider to provide the inoculations. People like free things, and they appreciate free things that are convenient. Arranging for a nearby facility to provide the shots makes it easy for the company to cover the expense.
After the Pandemic
As the pandemic diminishes, remind everyone that it is still not completely gone. Keep your guard up as the number of reported cases winds down. Do not slack on communicating the status until the pandemic is officially declared ended.
Pull all of the team members together for a pandemic plan performance assessment and critique. Recap the plan and how well it worked. Compare company performance to that of similar companies nearby. This could be a list of the actions taken, such as a company-sponsored immunization day, the family information helpline, or total number of sick days taken compared to previous (nonpandemic) years.
Collect your team’s ideas and publish them in a report to management. The various team members will have much to say about their individual efforts. Include details of what worked well and what must be changed. Pandemics do not come along every year. After the conclusion of a pandemic emergency, gathering this information is essential. It may be years before such an emergency arises again. This report should be the first document reviewed in the next emergency.
Report items might include:
An official announcement that the pandemic emergency plan was closed
Thanks to the many different people involved
A review of the effectiveness of the pandemic actions taken (social distancing, sanitation, communications)
Impact on employees and their families
Impact on sales of products and service
Impact on production
Impact on suppliers
Another post-pandemic activity is to examine how well the relaxed attendance and the work from home policies worked. Employees will have become accustomed to the new rules. Before rescinding them, determine the impact on company operations and morale.
THE ROLE OF THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER
A common factor in infectious diseases is that they are spread through people-to-people contact. The Human Resources Manager must identify which company policies impact its pandemic plan. This involves social distancing by enabling people to work from home and a relaxation of the company’s sick leave program.
Review Policies Concerning Virtual Workers
Working from home is not new, but it has become more practical through the widespread availability of high-speed Internet connections. If a worker is concerned about commuting on public transportation and demands to work from home, should that request be honored?
Under what circumstances should someone be permitted to work from home? Should it be based on the type of work they do or specific company positions? Should the option be open to all office workers (except those in production, as hands must reach the materials)?
Attendance Policy
Minimize employee-to-employee contact. If someone is ill, the company must require that person to go home until the illness passes. An obstacle here is limited sick leave time. If an employee does not have available sick leave time, they may come in while ill and spread the disease around the department (similar to one person with a cold infecting everyone around them).
A similar requirement is someone with a sick family member. That person could easily bring the infection into the workplace if company leave (paid or unpaid) was not available. Spell out when the company feels that an ill person is recovered enough to return to the workplace.
In severe situations, the government may step in and close parts of public institutions. This might be public assemblies, such as celebrations or sporting events. They might close public transportation, schools, or even government offices. Employees unable to travel to work must not be penalized.
During a pandemic emergency, the local government may call for everyone to minimize their movement, sort of like a “snow day.” Decide how the company will address paying employees for any government-imposed “stay home” days.
Trained Substitutes
Identify key personnel who can keep the company going. Each of them must have a trained backup. This provides ongoing service during vacations, illnesses, and other absences. (Some people may become nervous that the company intends to replace them.) In a pandemic, the trained substitute means you are more likely to have someone onsite to maintain a vital business function. When selecting backup personnel, consider your many company locations or regular business travel destinations.
Company Travel
The immediate area around your offices may experience little of the pandemic. However, most companies have employees who regularly visit distant or international locations. Travel often includes sitting in a crowded airplane in tiny seats, standing close to others in lines, and eating in cramped restaurants. This exposes the traveler to a greater potential of catching a disease.
To minimize the chance that a traveler is bringing back pandemic germs, set a company policy that anyone returning from a trip will work from home for four days before coming into the office. The idea is to give the disease (if present) some time to make itself known.
On occasion, distant sites will be particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Avoid travel to these locations, as the traveler may arrive there only to be placed in an extended quarantine as local officials struggle to contain the outbreak. Check the local news at the intended destination or websites such as the World Health Organization (www.who.int).
Consider Working Alternate Shifts
Separate employees by having them work different shifts. Not all work must be completed during the traditional 9 to 5 timeframe. If a person in a particular position primarily works alone, then the work can be completed on an alternate work shift and then passed on to the next person. This might be a valuable tool if the local schools close, allowing spouses to share childcare responsibilities without affecting your production.
TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP
The IT department is responsible for pandemic planning prior to an outbreak. Technology can be used to reduce face-to-face contact with coworkers, suppliers, and customers. A computer network does not care if you are sitting in an office, your home, or the next continent. In any case, your workstation connects to the network, and then to the appropriate IT services. It is important to install this technology before the onset of a pandemic. Then everyone will be familiar with the technology and ready to use it as needed.
As an added bonus, these IT actions will reduce the amount of pollutants generated through normal business practices. In some cases, they will directly save the company money.
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
Employees with high-speed Internet access in their homes can work from there. To maintain the privacy of company data, the communications from the employee’s home to the company data center is encrypted, thereby making the network “private.” This is similar to a secure session in which you enter credit card information into a vendor’s site, except that the encryption starts when the employee logs on.
Even when a pandemic is not looming on the horizon, a VPN can enable employees to work from home when caring for a sick family member or when they are too sick to come into the office but well enough to work at a computer. Some employers readily accept this arrangement, while others feel that sitting at home offers too many distractions that will result in less than a full day’s work. Still, people who spend their days working with computers and passing work objects electronically are suitable for this option if the individual has a high-speed data line at home. Positions that require exchanging work files objects (such as documents) with other people do not always fit this model.
Working at home does present some pitfalls. Primarily they deal with the security of company information. Data can still be printed locally or downloaded to local PC storage. Employees should be instructed that this insecure environment should never be used for critical company data or customer data of any type.
How many people will require VPN support in your pandemic plan? VPN systems have technical limits to the number of users they can support. Even if a company has an existing VPN capability, the next step is to ensure that it is adequate for the number of simultaneous users required in your pandemic plan. In addition, most use a physical “authentication token” to identify a person. An adequate supply of these tokens must be available when needed. Many companies provide them all of the time as this service also supports other business continuity plans.
VPNs also add to a company’s “green” credentials since fewer people are commuting to work. For details on the use of VPN and its green impact, read our book Green Tech (AMACOM, 2009).
Virtual Meetings
Teleconferencing is another social distancing technology tool. Instead of crowding into a tightly packed aircraft full of coughing and sniffling people, use teleconferencing to conduct meetings with distant workgroups. Online products, such as Microsoft’s NetMeeting, can show the same presentation slides as if you were standing there, while you provide the audio narrative over a phone line.
Teleconferencing lacks the face-to-face communications and, admittedly, it denies participants the ability to interpret body language, which is an important part of a discussion. However, an online meeting saves the time lost to travel, the expense of travel, and all of the potential infectious contacts with fellow travelers or business partners. It also adds to a company’s green credentials through reduced employee commuting.
SANITIZE COMMON AREAS AND OBJECTS
Often, employees or customers are infected before they know it. Their constant contacts with various fixtures around the facility are potential places for passing infections on to others. The company’s Facilities department must step up its level of sanitation efforts during a pandemic to reduce the spread of germs through contact with contaminated items.
Some of the areas that must be sanitized daily include:
Doorknobs and push plates
Banister rails
Light switches
Lunchrooms
Vending machines
Shared workstations and tools (e.g., the electronic card catalog in a library)
Provide employees with hand sanitizer, tissues, and even face masks. Place the hand sanitizer dispensers in prominent locations for use by employees and guests. This increases their confidence in the company management and reduces the spread of germs. There is expense for providing these items, but it is offset by even a slight reduction in the number of employee sick days.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENTS
Each business department must focus on continuing the flow of products and services to the customer in the face of significant absenteeism. As always, prioritize team members to work on the vital business functions and not spend time on noncritical actions.
This is especially important if a geographic area is particularly hard hit by absences. Many companies specialize functions among their many sites. In this case, the headquarters building may be relatively disease-free but the distant Accounts Receivables office could be in the middle of a pandemic emergency.
Assemble each business team and explain the relaxed attendance policies. Educate everyone on proper individual sanitation steps. These meetings are an opportunity for the company’s management team to demonstrate its commitment to the steps necessary to minimize infection. It also allows time to answer employees’ questions and pass their concerns on to the pandemic planning team.
If a department’s work involves a lot of face-to-face contact with customers, then appropriate sanitation must be readily available. Greeting a customer while wearing a face mask and surgical gloves is no way to close a sale. Provide hand sanitizer for all encounters (for the customer, as well as the employee). Most customers will appreciate your concern for their well-being as well as that of your own staff.
If there is a concern that the local pandemic outbreak will be severe, for the sake of business continuity, consider evacuating key personnel to other cities. Pandemics can sometimes hit one city much harder than another.
A COLLEGE ADJUSTS ITS GRADUATION CEREMONY
At the height of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, a university was faced with a dilemma. Graduation is an important milestone for students. Yet shaking hands as the diplomas were handed out could potentially spread infection from a student to the dean and then to subsequent graduating students (a typical social distancing problem). Rather than risk the health of the faculty and students, the school personnel handed over the diplomas and gave students “a knuckle bump” as they crossed the stage.
TESTING YOUR PANDEMIC PLAN
Pandemic plans are usually tested using a table-top exercise. They do not require reassembling offices or data centers. They are focused on people and avoiding the passing of infection.
Implement an exercise/drill to test your plan, and revise periodically. Testing a plan is the best way to train plan participants on their roles during an emergency. It also exposes gaps in planning and demonstrates if the plan is keeping current with changes in the company’s organization, mission, and direction. Test the company’s pandemic plan at least annually. Otherwise, it will become a shelf ornament. Without regular exercising and updates, it will become worthless when needed.
From time to time public organizations conduct tests of their pandemic plans. They like the chance to integrate a company’s reactions into the overall game plan to add twists to the exercise that they had not foreseen. Working a pandemic plan with other groups is a great way to add some realism to your company’s test and to bring fresh ideas into your pandemic action plan.
Conclusion
Pandemic planning is a subset of business continuity planning. Unlike the sharp point in time during which a disaster occurs, a pandemic is like an ocean wave. It slowly appears, overwhelms the population, and then gradually recedes. A typical pandemic will run for about a year and a half and strike in two waves, whereas a typical disaster is over in a few weeks.
Social distancing is an important mitigation step. Pandemics require loosening the company’s absence policy to ensure that sick people stay home. Time must also be allowed for tending to family members as employees may carry the infection from the family member to the workplace.
Use technology to enable people to work from home and stay separated from potential infection. This policy will also enable someone providing home care for a sick relative to still provide essential services. As a side note, this will also improve a company’s green credentials.
Establish a communications plan for passing information to employees, pandemic staff members, customers, and suppliers. Explain the steps you are taking and individual actions everyone should perform. Also provide information about detecting the symptoms and how to treat them at home. Communication plans must be in place before they are needed so that everyone knows where to look for what they need.
Finally, arrange for the immunization of employees and their families. This might be coordinated through local clinics and your health insurance provider. This practice will reduce the likelihood of an employee infection, and therefore reduced sick time absences. Some companies pay for the immunization to increase employee participation.