PANDEMIC PLANNING A MUST

MEMO TO: Management
FROM: Larry Smith, Institute for Crisis Management
DATE: April 22, 2008
RE: Prepare Your Organization For An Influenza Pandemic

Just because it hasn't happened, yet, doesn't mean the next worldwide influenza pandemic isn't coming.

Remember how many millions of dollars and countless hours of worry and preparation were spent in anticipation of the Y2K Bug?

Remember, nothing much went wrong? Did you ever go back and review what you did, what it cost and what it might have cost if you had not prepared?

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Centers for Disease Control are warning of a far greater threat facing the world, than Y2K. And like Y2K, 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.

While a few good companies and organizations have begun to prepare 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.

United States Secretary of Health & Human Services Michael Leavitt said recently: "Anything we say in advance of a pandemic seems alarmist. Anything you've done to prepare after it begins is inadequate."

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 and it's been nearly 40 years since the last one.

The worst outbreak of influenza was in 1918 and it claimed an estimated 50 million lives around the world and 500,000 in the US alone.

The World Health Organizaton reports 240 deaths as of the middle of April 2008. There have been 381 confirmed human cases according to WHO and that is nearly a 62-percent mortality rate.

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.

Forward thinking companies are already beginning to plan for the possibility.

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.

Part of the planning process will include determining the most effective and efficient method of communicating with those key audiences and anticipating which forms of communication will be more likely to work with so many people sick and dying.

For those companies that have already moved work off-shore, to Southeast Asia, China and Mexico, planning is even more important because conditions in many of those countries and healthcare shortcomings will exacerbate the impact of a pandemic.

The disease has already been confirmed in more than 55 countries, including Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Egypt, Japan, Laos, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and several countries in Africa.

To compound the threat, companies doing business in those countries have people traveling back and forth regularly. In fact, CDC is warning people that plan to visit Asian countries for more than ten days to immediately go to hospital with any hint of pneumonia or respiratory problems.

Healthcare insurers and providers should already be developing their plan, and charitable organizations need to prepare, also. If you depend on volunteers, and they are sick or afraid of getting sick, you will be impacted. If you depend on individual and corporate funding, and work is slowed or temporarily stopped by a pandemic, you will suffer immediate and significant financial loss.

Like preparation for Y2K, planning for something like a bird flu pandemic may seem far fetched and unnecessary. Y2K came and went with hardly a ripple. A flu pandemic will cause ripples even with preparation, but it will cause tidal waves if you do not plan, just in case.

Institute for Crisis Management

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