Prepare for All Possibilities, Including Flu Pandemic

Summary: Flu season is upon us, and people are taking the usual precautions, such as scheduling this year’s shots (for employees and—more importantly, according to Kiplinger Newsletter, employees’ children). Taking note of the season, the CNA/Schinnerer Guidelines for Improving Practice further advises firm principals to consider the business implications if something much more dire should strike—flu pandemic.

“Should an outbreak occur in the U.S., firms not only will have to take special precautions to protect employees, but also to react to critical delays on projects due to diminished staffing,” notes the September/October 2006 Guidelines.

Presently, cases of Avian Flu A (H5N1) have not been recorded in the U.S., and persons afflicted, particularly in Asia, had mostly been in close, prolonged contact with livestock. So the strain apparently has not yet found a way to pass readily from person to person. Four sobering facts take away any comfort level, though:

• History has shown how quickly mutations can change an animal-to-human disease into one passing easily among humans
• Global transportation systems put any one person within mere hours of nearly every other person on Earth
• The death rate of the avian flu has been very high
• Creating a vaccine for mass distribution is a timely process and is very difficult to begin until an active, virulent strain has been identified.

But there are some things firms can do now to prepare their employees and business position for potential mass disruptions, Guidelines points out:

• Prepare procedures for rapid response in the event of a breakout
• Check OSHA regulations to verify full compliance
• Examine insurance coverage, including treatment and disability benefits for persons who might become ill from exposure on the job
• Consider contract language addressing the possibility that a pandemic could make timely performance impossible (recognizing that a pandemic could be a deadline-delaying event under a force majeure provision, Guidelines notes)
• Let clients know the implications to the workforce—yours, your consultants’, and the contractor’s—and the possible detrimental effects to the timing and quality of projects.

“Many firms are currently providing services at capacity,” Guidelines concludes. The detrimental potential to people and projects due to a pandemic outbreak—notably of avian flu—“needs to be addressed in practice management procedures and professional service contracts.”