Business Continuity Planning and Resilience
Why plan NOW for a pandemic?
Every organisation will benefit from a business continuity plan to improve their organisational and community resilience to adverse events such as natural disasters, terrorist threats, human error, product recall or an influenza pandemic. A business continuity plan provides an opportunity to not only plan for, respond to, and recover from specific events, but to develop more robust operational processes to improve overall business operations and processes.
To ensure that you are prepared to meet the challenge of a pandemic, it is vital that you plan and prepare in advance for such an event. Developing a business continuity plan now will help you and your organisation, if a pandemic occurs, and will assist you in the recovery phase.
In the lead up to, and during a pandemic, your staff and volunteers will likely be concerned about, and preoccupied with, the well-being of their families. Their commitment or ability to work may not be their primary concern. Staff, volunteers and clients will likely feel reassured by your pandemic planning activities and will be pleased to know you are thinking ahead and preparing as best you can.
Unlike most disasters that are short, sharp and localised, a pandemic will be widespread, last for several months and come in waves. You can expect that at the peak of a pandemic, between 30 and 50 per cent of staff and volunteers to be absent from work due to illness, fear of contamination, caring responsibilities or restrictions of movement. As more people become ill, absenteeism will increase. This will have a profound effect on your organisation and its ability to continue operating, especially at a time when the particular services your organisation provides may be in even greater demand.
Essential community services
If your organisation provides essential community services, it is important that you have arrangements in place to enable it to continue to deliver these services as best you can. This might be developing flexible approaches to deliver your services while subject to limitations such as restriction of movement and disruptions to supplies. These pre-organised arrangements will help minimise disruptions to services to some of the most vulnerable people in the community, and assist overall community recovery.
Non-essential community services
Organisations not providing essential services may need to consider and plan for scaling down operations or closing for a period of time, or alternatively supporting other organisations that provide essential community services.