Swine Flu - Pandemic Planning - Does Your Organization Have an Emergency Plan?

Your business, big or small, needs to have an emergency backup plan. If you or your key workers were not able to make it into work, what would you do? Would your business suffer? Would your business lose customers? Would your business fail? What if the key employees were not able to make it into work for more than just a few days? Swine Flu, pandemic flu, or worse may prevent your employees from reporting to work.

With so many schools being closed due to the Swine Flu scare, parents are having to stay home with their kids. If they did have a before and after daycare sitter set up, that daycare sitter was not set up to watch children all day. Therefore, lots of parents had to stay home with their school age children.

With the constant pounding of having an emergency plan in our heads, many of us have enacted some steps in order to alleviate some concerns in case of a natural disaster. For example, we have stockpiled some water and canned goods as well as a small cache of available "cash" money. I have survived an eight day power outage that happened a few years ago in Shakopee Minnesota after a bad wind storm knocked down several power lines. The most immediate effect was people looking to get coffee. The local meat/grocery store had discounted meat available and put on a big barbeque for local residents.

But, what can businesses do to ensure their ongoing continuity? I worked at a Fortune 50 Company (where I was laid off in January 2009), where they had every kind of contingency, emergency, lockdown, whatever you can possibly imagine, plan, to deal with whatever emergency might crop up. The evacuation procedures were enacted once-in-a-while to make sure the employees and (lots) of contractors could make it safely out of the building.

I also worked for a satellite TV company, where we received bomb threats, about twice per month. I think these were due to the fact that customers owed money on their satellite services and called in bomb threats because they simply did not want to pay their bill? I don't know. We kept a calendar that showed when the full moon was, because it seemed that these bomb threats often coincided with the full moon.

I had an informative job interview today, at a company which can help your organization deal with widespread employee absences and keep your business on track. The company is called "SunGard" and has several IT solutions to keeping your business running, should the worse happen and you lose many of your key employees.

Check into getting a crisis plan for your company or check with SunGard, if you have concerns over a possible Swine Flu Pandemic.

Pandemic Preparedness guide:
http://www.availability.sungard.com/ResearchKnowledge/Pages/SwineFluPandemic.aspx