We look at how companies can keep business moving forwards should outbreaks of bird influenza lead to a human flu pandemic.

The reappearance of the bird flu virus has raised serious concerns about the possibility of a human flu pandemic. Over the past six months, outbreaks of avian influenza or bird flu have occurred in six countries outside East Asia. After crossing from China into Russia, outbreaks have been reported in Kazakhstan and have moved southwest to Ukraine, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria Cypress and Croatia.

"At this moment, it's not clear to what extent this epidemic is under control in Europe and Central Asia," says Juergen Voegele of the World Bank, which has just pledged a grant of USD 4 million to the Kyrgyz to help with avian influenza control and human pandemic preparedness.  "Our message to countries in the region is this: Be prepared.  Don't wait till you have an outbreak to think about drafting contingency plans and putting together a communications strategy," he warns.

The impact of such an outbreak will be almost inexorable on the global economy. According to the World Bank, the economic cost of a Human flu pandemic would be around USD 800 billion (EUR 682 billion) over a year, that is, a drop by two per cent in the World GDP.

Is your organisation ready?

Some inevitable questions for businesses include, "Are businesses ready to face human flu pandemic?", and "What should companies do to prevent shut-down scenarios during human flu pandemic?"

In the midst of the SARS outbreak in 2003, thousands of employees in many countries were asked to go into quarantine. Others avoided travelling, stayed at home, and went out less to eat and shop. Many employees were also not equipped to work from home. Laptops had to be shipped to their homes and internet connections had to be established so that they could do some work.

ORC Worldwide, a premier human resources data and consulting company, conducted a survey in November 2005 and found that less than 10 percent of the 195 companies surveyed had taken action to curtail employee business travel to parts of the world affected by avian influenza.

Robert J. Freedman, president and chief executive officer of ORC Worldwide, says, "Most companies we surveyed are taking a prudent, rational approach to this threat. They are educating their employees, and watching the situation closely, but are unlikely to take action until a travel advisory is issued by either the World Health Organisation, Centers for Disease Control, SOS, or their government agencies."

Siobhan Cummins of ORC Worldwide adds, "If companies are not prepared to deal with the epidemic, their business can suffer significantly and they may even be forced to shut down. Good planning will help to prevent this."

Cummins advises companies to create contingency plans to ensure business continuity. "As a first off, they can categorise staff by essential, important, business critical, not business critical and not important. By focusing on those that are critical to the business, they can decide how to manage the business going forward," she says.

Setting up temporary offices

Cummins suggests that companies introduce 'staggered' working patterns. This means that employees work on alternate days so that the entire workforce is not potentially exposed at the same time. Setting up temporary offices where essential staff can work away from the main offices is also a good option, she explains.

Staff supervision will be an issue, says Cummins, but if the correct measures are put in place early on, the business can be managed by a combination of email, telephone and in-person meetings. "Good processes and procedures will help," she says.

Teleworking

Teleworking is another work strategy that could work during an outbreak of human pandemic. Such arrangements eradicate the need to travel to customers or office. Employees can simulate face-to-face meeting with customers through video conferencing tools, plus access business information through the internet and the company's Virtual Private Network (VPN).

Research shows that virtual working leads to improved work concentration and allows the breakdown of continuous working hours into segments which suit the worker better. The result is increased work production and enhanced work quality while, at the same time, employees are able to both socialise and spend some quality time with their family.

 

Teleworking: Trusting your employees to work under minimal supervision is key

For telework arrangements to function properly, setting up simple collaboration tools such as online calendars and instant messaging is essential. In this way, employees not only can plan for face-to-face meetings in places unaffected by the pandemic, but they are also able to coordinate tasks and procedures when working on the same project.

However, in order to implement telework under such circumstances, trust and confidence needs to be built up beforehand between the employee, employer and customers. The employer must have confidence that his teleworking employees are responsible and disciplined enough to work independently, and will require no or little supervision. The customers must be assured that service continuity will be maintained and the level of service will not drop dramatically.

Indeed, human flu pandemic could pose a very big challenge for businesses. The best thing companies can do, according to Siobhan Cummins of ORC Worldwide, "is to maintain calm in what might otherwise be a panic situation. This will help them to manage their business and keep the status quo."

Other resources

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en/

http://europa.eu.int/comm/health/ph_threats/com/
Influenza/influenza_en.htm

http://www.info.gov.hk/info/flu/eng/

http://www.flu.gov.sg/

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/

http://reports.typepad.com/pandemic_plan/

14 February 2006

Jasper Lim is a researcher at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He is investigating the impacts of telework on organisation workflow and employee travel behaviour.

Subject: HR and human pandemic, managing expatriates during human flu pandemic