Pandemic Plan and Traditional BCP

Dear BC/DR Planning Colleague:

With the recession foremost on everyone's minds, the alarm set off by the 2005 outbreak of Avian flu or dread of biological warfare set in motion by September 11, 2001, have inevitably subsided into the collective memory of the American psyche. Yet the possibility of a pandemic or biological attack is just as real today.

This month, in our ongoing series of business continuity planning tips, Tom Abruzzo, our BCM practice consulting leader, would like to bring the topic of pandemic planning back to the fore. In his experience, he finds many businesses incorporate their pandemic plan within their traditional BCP without considering the dissimilarities. His message this month is to distinguish those differences.

March Tip: Don't Combine a Pandemic Plan with a Traditional BCP

Planners sometimes try to integrate a conventional plan that assumes people ARE available with a health epidemic plan that assumes people are NOT available.

These are incongruent issues: One is a building/technology problem, and the other a people problem. In the case of a physical/technology outage, there's no place to work or no technology to work with. In a pandemic situation, on the other hand, the facility and technology are completely accessible...but there's a shortage of personnel for operations.

A pandemic plan, then, assumes a high percentage of staff absenteeism. In addition to actually being ill, this depleted workforce can be the result of number of factors affecting the employee-caring for school-age children as a result of schools being closed, caring for someone who is ill, fear of becoming sick, psychological effects of experiencing high numbers of sickness and death (this type of situation amplifies nervous breakdowns, suicides, etc.)-or, not to be macabre, but some personnel and management will die.

Recommendation: Separate and treat these as two different issues and plans.

A pandemic plan might include cross training employees in various disciplines, keeping retired employees up-to-date and in reserve as consultants, work-at-home strategies, etc.

The actuality is that severe absenteeism may be more devastating to your business than a physical/technological outage.

If you would like to discuss planning for a pandemic or health crisis in more depth, feel free to contact Tom directly at 1-800-252-4080 or tabruzzo@tampsystems.com.