Corporate Pandemic Planning
Contact Health Services Australia Group and the Travel Doctor to assist your organisation develop a corporate pandemic plan. Mr Brock Cambourne – 07 3307 9471 or Dr Tony Gherardin – 03 9224 8352
- 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
Duty of Care for Staff
As with any aspect of corporate life, companies have a duty of care to their staff. It will be important to engage staff in the process of pandemic planning and to understand the human reactions to a vague and potential problem that may seem over-dramatised in the general media.
Duty-of-care responsibilities extend to staff at work, those who work at home, those who travel, the contractors and suppliers that are engaged with the company, as well as the clients and public who are the customers.
For staff, a reasonable expectation is that:
- they have access to appropriate up-to-date information
- they have access to basic preventive strategies, such as masks (if required at a particular stage of an epidemic) and hand-washing facilities
- that the workplace and work practices are adjusted where possible to minimise exposure to infectious agents, and appropriate cleaning and hygiene is conducted.
Staff traveling to areas of increased risk should have access to information, preventive advice, vaccination and possible treatment.
Companies should consider offering the influenza vaccination to all staff.
Related Information
- All staff should be aware of the basic hygiene techniques and principles for protection against respiratory disease. For hygiene tips go to our Fact Sheet section.
- During a pandemic there will be a very important pool of workers who contract the disease but survive and become immune. Keeping a database of these individuals would make staffing front-line public areas easier.
- Pandemics usually spread to all parts of the globe within less than a year and affect more than a quarter of the total population; they also tend to recur in second and sometimes third waves.
- If 25% of Australians were affected by an influenza pandemic and there was no vaccine or treatment available, 13,000 to 44,000 deaths and 57,900 to 148,000 hospitalisations could occur over a 6 to 8 week period.
