Swine Flu - Is Your Company Prepared?

Swine flu, or H1N1 for us Iowans who want to be piglitically correct, has been in the news for months now, and most of us have pretty much stopped paying attention. But the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it a world-wide pandemic... the first one in forty years! So that should grab our attention! It has already affected 30,000 people in 74 countries world-wide, and even though those pesky little virus bugs will lie low during the summer months, they are expected back full force this fall.

So if we do have a worst case scenero this fall, is your company prepared? The Mercer company did a survey of large companies and found two out of five didn't have contingency plans to deal with emergencies or disasters. I would imagine with small companies that percentage would be even higher. So if half of your employees call in sick some Monday morning in October, what are you going to do?

Now is the best time to be thinking about how to respond to a worst case scenero, not on that Monday morning after you've received the 10th call from your sick employees. Here are some of the things to think about and put some contingency plans in place.

• How will you communicate with your employees?
• How will you keep disease from spreading employee to employee? (hygene, work from home, limit travel and meetings, health screenings, etc.)
• How will you keep the essential functions of your business operating and your customers served?

There are resources available on-line to help you prepare contingency plans. The World Health Organization website is one. Local agencies such as Red Cross can also be resources. We can point you to others.

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