I’ve been doing some interesting reading recently about disaster preparedness, and business continuity planning, and I noticed that several experts have stated that companies relying on existing business continuity plans for addressing a potential pandemic of the avian flu will fail. Many seem to agree that most standard business continuity plans are designed and planned to handle only geographically specific disasters, such as a fire, an earthquake, or a flood.

But health officials have been warning that when a pandemic does happen, it will spread across the globe quickly and create simultaneous worldwide business disruptions. For example; relying on a backup data center in India probably won't be able to help a company located in the United States stay in business. The people who run that backup data center in India will be just as sick as the company’s employees here in the states.

And if the pandemic spreads across the globe as quickly as some experts suggest, worldwide social and economic disruptions will be a significant consequence as governments across the globe enact quarantines that could last anywhere from a couple of weeks to as much as three months.

So, how might that affect us? Here’s an interesting statistic: According to the Department of Transportation, during 2006 approximately 370,000 people crossed our borders entering the United States every day. Now simply multiply that by the number of borders throughout the world, and you’ll quickly see that literally millions of people cross different country’s borders every day as they travel. How many of those people will be carrying the H5N1 flu virus?

Companies should plan on helping their employees deal with a pandemic personally, because employees who are struggling to support their families during a pandemic will not have time to help support the business.

The capacity of our public healthcare services will be stretched beyond their limit with everyone sick and needing some kind of medical attention. Many will have to be isolated or quarantined. It's becomes essential then, to identify the critical employees who will need access to the business during a pandemic because it is likely that not everyone will be able to connect remotely during flu pandemic.

Some suggestions offered by health care experts included being prepared to house employees on-site for several days to a couple of weeks. This means provisions such as food, water and medicine if employees are trapped on site and can’t go home. Also, it would be a good idea to negotiate agreements with vendors before a pandemic strikes. During an actual pandemic, vendors will be affected just as much as your employees are.

So, obviously the time to think about disaster preparedness and your company’s business continuity plans to handle a flu pandemic is now, not when it hits.

David Wagner, CFM, CFMJ