Few Businesses Are Prepared For The Bird Flu
Despite warnings, most businesses haven't developed plans to stay operating if there's an outbreak of bird flu.
Darrell Dunn, InformationWeek
June 5, 2006 – For the past year, public health officials have warned that avian influenza, which has been seen only in isolated outbreaks, could mutate and cause a pandemic, potentially killing millions and severely disrupting economies and businesses worldwide. Yet few businesses have plans in place to deal with such an emergency.
A survey of 179 U.S. businesses conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions finds that 66% of respondents say their company isn't adequately prepared for a pandemic outbreak, and nearly three-quarters say they need help to understand how to plan for such an event.
Many businesses have updated their disaster recovery and business continuity plans in the past year based on lessons learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. So they may be better prepared to handle the upcoming hurricane season, but it isn't clear that those plans will help if there's a major outbreak of bird flu.
"In many instances, we are always planning for the last disaster," says David Palermo, VP of marketing for SunGard, one of the largest providers of disaster recovery and business continuity services. "And after every major disaster, there is always a lot of interest that doesn't necessarily translate into action."
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SunGard is still doing research and developing plans to help its customers cope with the potential impact of an extensive flu outbreak. "It may be that traditional disaster recovery services work just fine. But companies should be examining how they can run their businesses with a large percentage of their employees at home."
That can be more complicated than it would appear on the surface, says David Erwin, CIO at New Orleans law firm Adams & Reese. The experience of Katrina will help if the flu becomes a major problem, Erwin says. The firm's use of MessageOne's EMS E-mail continuity platform kept the BlackBerry devices used by lawyers and other employees in the firm operating despite the loss of cell phone service and other forms of communications in the New Orleans area.
During the storm and subsequent flooding, Erwin had to quickly relocate about 300 employees from New Orleans. The firm was competing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to secure homes and apartments in places such as Baton Rouge, La. Employees were able to use the BlackBerrys to communicate and secure real estate contracts for displaced employees and keep E-mail communications in place for the firm and its clients.
The law firm also is replacing its existing VPN concentrator with new gear from Cisco Systems to let it handle more simultaneous remote connections, which would let the firm implement a large-scale work-at-home strategy.
Making sure there are enough communications connections so employees can work from home is a good thing--if people have computers with them. While a large percentage of the workers at Adams & Reese use laptops, many didn't take them as they evacuated. "People packed for the weekend. They thought they'd be back," Erwin says. "We have a new policy that requires people to take their laptops with them."
A pandemic could infect up to 30% of the population in the first wave, and 40% of the workforce would be out for weeks at a time, either because they're sick, they're caring for sick relatives, they're watching children who can't go to school, or they're afraid to venture outside, health officials say.
Greg Holdburg, manager of disaster recovery services for S1, a provider of software and services for the banking industry, began working on a plan about six months ago. The first step was to determine how well the company could operate with a 25% to 40% reduction in key staff. He randomly drew the names of half of his disaster recovery coordinators and then went through a planning scenario to find out if the company could adequately perform without the missing staff.
"The answer was no. There were too many missing holes," he says. S1 has since been implementing cross-training programs. Other actions include identifying which employees can work at home and documenting their access to laptops and broadband connections. The effort, Holdburg says, is far from complete.
It can be hard to convince executives that they need to spend money and resources to develop a pandemic recovery and continuity plan, Holdburg says. "Executives feel they got burned a bit on the Y2K scare," he says. "A lot of companies spent a lot of money on new software and equipment for something that never really happened."
That shouldn't slow down planning, Holdburg says. Resources dedicated to pandemic emergency efforts can produce other benefits, such as in creating more workable telecommuting environments that could be used if a building were lost because of a natural disaster.
Businesses can start with something as simple as a calling tree, says Neal Tisdale, VP of software development for NewEnergy Associates, a provider of software and services for the oil and gas industry. That's a lesson the company learned in the hours following the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
"A pandemic means everyone stays at home," Tisdale says. "That's what we saw after 9/11. But we [first] had to determine where all our people were, contact their spouses, and arrange transportation. Having a phone tree in place can ensure people can be quickly found and communications disseminated."
Sun Microsystems thinks technology and the practices it has in place will help in such an emergency. Between 40% and 50% of its 38,000 employees already telecommute from home or work in drop-in centers instead of large company office buildings. "Some of these arrangements would work to our advantage if we are ever in a pandemic," Bill MacGowan, Sun's chief human resources officer, told Reuters. "A lot of our employees are used to working from home."
Companies that don't have such plans and technology in place need to move quickly. If they don't, the flu might hit their business as hard as a hurricane.
