With such a huge potential impact, and with constant reminders of the growing likelihood of a pandemic, businesses worldwide are now searching for the best way to deal with this emerging threat. Avalution Consulting’s approach to planning for “people” availability, specific to the Avian Flu threat, is centered on a four-step process:

1) Develop assumptions specific to each organization

• What does Avian Flu mean to the organization?
• What may be impacted, for how long and to what extent?
• What are the assumptions unique to the business, both domestically and for any locations overseas?
• What are the critical elements of the business, particularly those heavily dependent on people and those that are potential single points of failure impacting critical value streams? What are the most critical products for the most critical customers?
• Is business executed in a way that would contribute to significant business impact in the event of a pandemic event? For example, is product located in a single warehouse, can call centers route calls to one another, etc.?
• Who are the organization’s stakeholders – both internally and externally?

2) Identify response and mitigation options

• Is a process in place to monitor global health alerts based on the location of your international interests, specifically suppliers, outsourcers, and customers?
• Is a process in place to track employees that travel both domestically and internationally?
• Can joint crisis management/recovery plans be developed or expanded with key suppliers?
• How should the business handle decision making, and is there a succession plan in place?
• What and where are the critical staffing needs?
• Are there technology limitations that will impact the organization’s ability to enable employees to work from home?
• How are critical products sourced, both domestically and from overseas locations? Also, how are they shipped? Are there supply chain single points of failure?

3) Prioritize options based on risk

Organizations can take specific actions and implement advanced planning measures to limit the impact of a pandemic event. Possible risk mitigation actions include:

• Activating an inventory allocation decision-making process – determining how to allocate product to customers assuming limited supplies and limited warehouse staffing;
• Enhancing the employee assistance program, and considering expanding the employee assistance program to address the employees’ family’s needs;
• Implementing contingency plans in the event of a supply chain disruption;
• Reviewing customer contracts for ‘force-majeure’ clauses as a method to manage legal risk;
• Establishing customer assistance policies and processes; and
• Creating an emergency work at home or flexible work policy – and considering how management will modify the payroll and time off policies if a pandemic event occurs.

Developing response strategies is important, but knowing what strategies to implement and when to do so is critical to reduce the spread of the illness at work. Although each risk mitigation strategy is unique, and organizations are approaching this issue differently, some commonly considered concepts include:

• Implementing healthy workplace actions and awareness campaigns
• Changing the culture of the business with actions such as closing conference rooms and the cafeteria, as well as other places where employees congregate
• Moving people to less-concentrated areas
• Adding safety stock for critical product

Prepare for special needs of employee family members by:

• Pre-qualifying alternative domestic or local suppliers;
• Deploying work at home IT assets; and
• Freezing non-critical operations and redeploy critical personnel to critical tasks directly impacting critical customers.

4) Implement solutions and develop awareness programs

Once the options are identified and prioritized, they will be implemented throughout the organization. A key component of this is the Crisis Management Team, responsible for managing the ongoing response to a crisis such as pandemic influenza. In addition to crisis management, a crisis communications plan is important to establish defined communications to stakeholders. Elements of an organization’s crisis communications program should include:

• Defining emergency notification processes
• Creating channels to coordinate and communicate with public authorities and media
• Identifying communications teams located at each domestic and international location
• Defining and developing targeted stakeholder communications processes and content
• Considering the activation of a cross-functional customer response center

Beyond developing and documenting strategies and plans, exercising these new threat-specific plans is important, as is rolling out awareness activities. Fear will be the variable most likely to impact your organization, and awareness and communication will be the key risk mitigation techniques.