SMEs should draw up disaster contingency plans to prepare themselves for a possible bird flu pandemic, according to Stuart McKellar, Director of Honiton based human resource specialists HR Advantage.
Amidst warnings from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that Britain is at greater risk of the virus spreading than any other country and the news that Britain's biggest bank, HSBC, has planned for half its 230,000 staff worldwide being unfit to work in the event of outbreaks of bird flu turning into a human flu pandemic, Stuart Mckellar warns that SMEs may be hard hit.
"Whilst there remains uncertainty of an outbreak of avian flu SMEs should act prudently and put into place contingency plans, considering the impact a flu pandemic would have on their customers, suppliers and staff, planning a disaster recovery situation" advises Stuart.
"One of the most sensible plans to mitigate the impact of sickness is to identify key employees whose absence would seriously affect the performance of the business and to spread their knowledge and skills amongst other staff, so reducing the impact of absence of those key employees. Employers should also consider reorganising staff working patterns, perhaps by segregating the work force into wholly separate shift systems. It's also important" concludes Stuart "for employers to make sure that systems are in place to communicate effectively with staff, explaining the reasoning behind decision making, so that if flu strikes, employees can be informed about measures that can be taken to reduce the risk of infection both before and after a crisis hits".
The WHO advises companies to anticipate up to 25% of staff to be absent during a pandemic and organisations that don't plan for such a contingency face significant disruption. "It is our experience that our people at HR Advantage can help employers avoid a last minute panic reaction by putting into place sensible contingency plans that will safeguard the survival of their businesses. There is a distinct parallel with a computer virus" comments Stuart. "Business leaders would not consider being unprotected by anti-virus software or not back up their data but a flu pandemic poses risks that are potentially just as damaging, and just as simply mitigated".
