Plan Now To Keep Your Business In Business

“Business continuity” means ensuring that essential business functions can survive a natural disaster, technological failure, human error, or other disruption. In recent times, assuring business continuity has also meant planning for terrorist-related biological, chemical, or nuclear attacks.

 

Many existing business continuity plans anticipate disruptions such as fires, earthquakes, and floods; these events are restricted to a certain geographic area, and the time frames are fairly well defined and limited. Pandemic flu, however, demands a different set of continuity assumptions since it will be widely dispersed geographically and potentially arrive in waves that could last several months at a time.

 

Depending on the flu strain and based on previous pandemics, public health officials project cumulative absentee rates of 40 percent over three to four months. Absentees will include sick employees, those who must care for others who are sick, and the “worried well,” who may want to avoid the workplace for fear of being exposed to the virus.