Fact Sheets
WHY DOES YOUR ORGANISATION NEED TO DEVELOP A STRATEGIC RESPONSE?
- To protect your business, and ensure business continuity
- To protect your staff
- To minimise the impact of an influenza pandemic on your company
Nobody can accurately predict when an influenza pandemic will occur, however there is expert agreement that it will occur. It is 37 years since the last one, and the current outbreaks of avian influenza greatly increase the chance of a new pandemic.
As with all contingency planning, establishing a company wide strategic response for pandemic influenza is important, and generally should follow the same process. The response should be consistent with the national pandemic plan, and should seek to identify risk, implement specific risk reduction, and define emergency responses. The plan should help guide the organisation through a changing work environment should a pandemic occur.
It is likely that a pandemic would last 2-3 months, and during that phase large scale social and community disruption would occur. It is possible that only essential services would be available during some or all of this time, and many non-essential services will be unavailable for longer periods both before and after any initial phase of a pandemic. Part of the preventive action in the community will be to close non-essential services, schools, public transport etc.
Organisations need to plan to keep business open and functional for as long as possible. Supply chain, consumables, transport logistics may be all severely affected in the event of a pandemic, and businesses should plan to account for those contingencies now.
Your plan needs to be a dynamic “living” document, to cater for the changes that will continue to occur. New information about the disease, the drugs, vaccines etc, needs to be continually included, and changes in staff needs and concerns is also important to reflect within the document.
You may need to consult specific medical services, such as Health Services Australia/ Travel doctor group to help provide an opportunity for review of information and communications from a medical view point, and develop specific medical protocols for prevention, vaccination, drug strategy and overall consistency with national public health priorities and advice.
Checklist:
- Appoint responsible staff for plan development
- Review Business Continuity plans, Information on threat
- Identify Core Business Vulnerabilities
- Devise Plan
- Develop Communication strategy
- Implementation
- Monitoring, Review and Revision
