The impact could be severe:

• Employee sickness or death,
• Large scale absenteeism due to fear of going to work,
• Inability to meet product or service commitments,
• Failure to meet corporate contractual obligations,
• Potential of severely damaged reputation,
• Significant financial losses / loss of market-share.

History has taught us that having an all encompassing plan of what your organization will do in response to a pandemic is literally impossible to achieve and quite frankly a waste of time.  So what can we do?

"Pre-Event Response Planning"-- provide an understanding of the threat, precautionary and preventative measures that can be taken, and a roadmap of an organization's best efforts to support employees and minimize operational disruption to the business.

Here are my Top ‘10' Issues and Steps You Can Take in Response to a Pandemic:

1. Keep your employees informed - lack of understanding and fear of the unknown is a deadly combination when it comes to employee reaction to a Pandemic threat. While there are countless information sources that provide a realistic understanding of the threat, most people draw conclusions from headlines and what others are saying.
   
   Do what you can to keep your employees informed and aware of your organizations actions; a dedicated page on your internal website is a good start.



2. Support and assist their families - the number one priority of every employee in a Pandemic will naturally be their own family. Providing information to employees to assist their families in understanding the threat and what they can do at home to ease their concerns would help not only the family, but it may help employees focus on Company issues as well.



3. Manage rumors and speculation - maintain vigilance on what the media is saying and particularly what rumors, speculation and assumptions are being made in the office regarding the pandemic. Be prepared to respond each and every time something new is introduced to the rumor mill.
   
   As an employer you are obligated to provide as much ‘factual' information as possible. It's better that all employees receive a daily update during the entire threat than to allow misguided and ill-informed rumors to control the beliefs and attitudes of your employees.



4. Counter the negative impact of the news media - bad news sells and a great deal of sensational reporting will result. Where appropriate, this negative view must be tempered within your organization with facts and status information as issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other ‘public safety' related agencies such as your local Centre for Disease Control, as well as the positive steps your organization is taking.



5. Take precautionary and preventative measures - this may actually prevent the spread of the influenza and of equal importance, earn the trust of employees that the organization is responding in an effective manner. Adopting the WHO guidelines for controlling the spread of influenza represents the best advice available.



6. In a pandemic, over-reaction is well worth the effort - don't be swayed by some views that you don't want to over-react to a situation. Unlike most crises, a Pandemic can cause wide spread stress, panic, fear, anxiety and a great deal of confusion. Employee actions or inactions are going to be directly aligned to their attitude towards the organization and how they personally believe the situation is being managed. Do whatever it takes and keep them informed.



7. Key customer confidence is constantly at risk - how well your organization manages through a Pandemic or fails in its response to the crisis will dictate your customers' continued loyalty. You must clearly demonstrate to your customers that you are doing all you can to minimize the negative impact of the Pandemic. Keep your customers informed about your actions; offer to assist them in planning their response; work together to ensure a long term relationship is maintained.



8. Critical Service Providers put your organization at risk - direct your service providers to respond in a manner consistent with the threat and at least equal to your own response to the Pandemic. If their operations are quarantined or if they experience significant loss of life, the impact on your organization could be severe.



9. Keeping your plans a secret benefits no one - while there may be a tendency to protect the secrecy of your plans out of fear of being accused of doing to much or too little, it actually has the opposite affect. Promote what you have done; it's a significant marketing opportunity. Share your efforts and plans, not only with your employees and contractors, but with your key customers, product and service providers and even the media. Displaying your organization as being caring and proactive can deliver significant benefits.



10. Engage your experts in the planning process - it's vital that senior members of key ‘Utility' groups within your organization participate in the development of your Pre-Event Response Plan. These include: Corporate Security, Human Resources, Facilities Management, Health and Safety, Business Continuity Management. It's their combined knowledge and skills that will determine the most appropriate and complete actions that must be taken.

Operational Capability in Response to a Pandemic

Ensure your Pandemic Pre-Event Response Plan only incorporates the information you will need to effectively manage through a pandemic situation (Business Continuity Plans do not form part of a Pre-Event Response Plan).

• An understanding of the Pandemic threat
• Impact globally, nationally and to your organization
• Pandemic phases of the WHO
• Risks to your organization
• Escalating actions to be taken by Pandemic phase
• Precautionary and preventative measures taken or planned
• Appendices can include: Employee Education, Cleaning Recommendations by Pandemic Phase, as well as Medical Screening Forms and Use

Ensure your mass notification and targeted communication service capabilities can meet all of your in-crisis requirements including a quick means to incorporate all potential Stakeholders. Employees, contractors, customers, suppliers and potentially hundreds or thousands of additional Stakeholders may need to receive information, instructions or be a source of information for you.

A key communications requirement for multi-site organizations is the capability to easily initiate and rapidly change the site status message on a site-by-site basis. As the impact and status for each site will differ, so must the Site Status Message that the local employees will hear.

A Pandemic, like all crises, will constantly change in terms of impact and therefore so will the actions taken by your organization. Automatically distributing Event Status Reports based on variable criteria such as alert levels and actions taken, is key to managing rumors, speculation and assumptions.

Recognizing that some Company employees will be relied upon to respond to the Pandemic and the primary concern of those same employees will be their families, it is vitally important that they are provided with a capability, through a single call, to inform family and friends as to their personal status

It's critical that a real time ‘Event Status Report' be maintained so that you're ready to release information at any time on both a fixed and variable basis. Your Event Status Report could be issued hundreds of times during a Pandemic so version control will be necessary.

Because of the topical and potential impact of the Swine Flu, I'll continue this conversation with the next Blog.

And in the next few Blogs, I'll provide you with an operationally proven model of a ‘Pandemic Pre-Event Response Plan'. My goal will be to make this especially valuable to organizations at the early stages of addressing the Swine Flu and other Pandemic threats.

Stay tuned.