Corporate Pandemic Planning

• Why have a Pandemic Plan?
• Business Continuity Planning
• Defining Essential Business Elements
• Duty of Care for Staff
• Staff who Travel
• Staff who Work at Home
• Psychological Issues
• Useful Checklists

Congruence with business continuity planning

It is important that pandemic planning is essentially consistent with general contingency and business continuity plans (BCP). Many aspects are immediately transferable, and many of the key activities such as delegating responsibilities, communications, identification of core business elements, and planning for supply-chain disruption are common elements.

The major difference is that most BCPs have evolved around a single point event, with a geographically localised event or a breakdown in a single business system such as IT systems.

The challenge that a pandemic presents is an issue of human resource problems lasting over a protracted and unpredictable time, affecting many locations in different timeframes, and compounded by closures of community and business resources in this and other countries.

From the Australian Government, the Business Continuity Guide, contains good advice and a useful planning checklist.

It can be found at http://www.industry.gov.au/pandemicbusinesscontinuity/    It was released in late June 2006, and contains sound planning advice for Australian companies.

Congruence with national public health plans

It is also important that specific pandemic plans are consistent with national public health plans.

The Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Services has developed the Australian Management Plan For Pandemic Influenza, June 2005. The aim of this document is to provide a detailed guide for the Australian response to a pandemic influenza threat.

It is essentially a plan to help public health authorities address the pandemic threat and helps set the context in which Australia will face the problems that arise. It can be found at:

• Australia's National Pandemic Plan

The New Zealand Government has developed the National Health Emergency Plan: Infectious Diseases, which includes Annexe 3: Pandemic Influenza. This document provides a detailed guide for the New Zealand response to a pandemic influenza threat.

It can be found at www.moh.govt.nz/nhep.

Back To Top

Defining essential business elements

Identification of essential business components is required. This will include core business units, subsets of management, communications, financial controls, particular human resources, and perhaps others. A strategy for protecting these essential components will be required.

Operations

Specific operational components essential for business continuity need to be protected. Many companies will already have identified essential business elements, and these need to be considered in the light of possible pandemic scenarios of low staffing, lack of transport, social isolation, and supply-chain disruption.

Planners will need to consider what tasks can be done at home, what tasks need to be staffed by indispensable staff, and what services can be modified to reduce human resources and public interaction.

Overseas operations should be considered in the light of partial or total shutdown, possible border closures and quarantine delays. Operations dependent on other international organisations should identify what strategic planning is being done by those organisations and what their proposed emergency responses might be.

Human resources

The expected feature of an influenza pandemic is of major community-wide illness, which will result is staffing shortages due to personal illness and the need for people to take time off to care for the ill.

A possible worst-case estimate suggests up to 40% of the working population could be affected in the peak of a pandemic. This could last several weeks. Absence rates of 5-10% could be expected over a much longer period after the initial phase.

Particular issues for staff with occupational exposures to pandemic influenza and those essential workers who may be provided with antivirals include:

• monitoring of staff for illness and adverse reactions to antiviral medications
• implementing six week rotations of staff on antivirals
• supervised and recorded dosing of antivirals.

There will be a very important pool of workers who contract the disease but survive and hence become immune. If a database of these individuals was kept it would make staffing front-line public areas easier. Also, this group would not require vaccination when it did eventually became available, thereby easing the pressure on vaccinating the remaining non-immune population.

Back To Top