Be Pandemic Ready

Five Ways to Remain Pandemic Ready

Here are five ways you as a business continuity management (BCM) professional can help your organization retain its pandemic survival skills into the future.

Maintain the ability to shift quickly to a remote work model.

One of the few bright sides of the current pandemic is, it has led to companies becoming very good at working from home. This will likely reduce the impact of many different kinds of outages and events moving forward. To stay pandemic-proof, organizations need to maintain this hard-won skill even after large numbers of employees return to the office. This means keeping training and technology up to date and performing regular exercises to verify functionality.

Regularly review and refresh your on-site work adjustments.

The same goes with the measures that have been implemented to make worksites safer. These measures include making disinfecting gel available, physical barriers, changes to ventilation, signage, reconfiguring production lines, social distancing policies, and masking requirements. As the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, these measures are likely to be phased out. To be ready for the next pandemic, organizations should retain the ability to quickly restore these measures. They should routinely review and update their plans to keep up with changes in their environment and work processes.

Regularly review and update your pay and furlough policies.

The COVID-19 provided a crash course in dealing with the challenges of pay and furlough policies. The issue is likely to come up in a future pandemic. Organizations should leverage their experience of this issue over the past two years to refine their policies for the future. It’s best to make decisions ahead of time. Wise organizations recognize that their resilience depends on their earning and keeping the loyalty of their employees. Having empathy in developing pay and furlough policies is not soft; it’s practical. Being ready for a future pandemic requires thinking through and making decisions about these matters in advance.

Establish and regularly update milestones for activating your pandemic plan.

Many companies with facilities in hurricane-prone areas have set up milestones triggering various actions in their response plans. Organizations should have similar milestones in their pandemic plans. Sample milestones might include: hearing news reports of a new infectious disease in a remote country, learning of confirmed cases of the disease in one’s own country, and a rate of infection in one’s own country in the single digits—all the way up to: 50 per cent of the organization’s workforce being unable to work. Each milestone would be tied to steps the organization would take to ensure its readiness and protect its operations. Preparations should start well before the organization experiences an impact.

Establish plans and processes for a reduction in staff.

Your business continuity and pandemic plans must include strategies and actions for continuing your business functions with fewer people. Integrate this with the milestones noted above. What is the priority of functions? What tasks can be done with limited supervision by other team members, allowing experienced staff to perform the speciality aspects of functions? Are there third parties that can step in and provide staff augmentation? This plan and expectation need to be in place before the event.

By taking these steps, you can help ensure that your organization carries its hard-won pandemic survival skills into the future.

Reference

Richard Long. (2021). <i>Helping Your Organization Retain Its Pandemic Survival Skills. MHA Consulting. https://www.mha-it.com/2021/11/04/pandemic-survival-skills

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