Swine flu, or more exactly Influenza A H1N1 (that has nothing porcine) is waiting close to our doors and is a real threat to businesses. Ok, we should stop spreading doom and gloom. I don’t want to try to stir up controversy, we’re not talking about plague and the risk of seing the population being decimated is very week. Seen from an enterprise point of view, it reminds me of the year 2K bug : widely oversold and all the more innofensive since businesses got prepared to it.
We have to admit that having many employees forced to stay in bed is not a good prospect for businesses who are already facing very hard times. And the more the ill people will be central in the organization and the internal networks, the worse the consequences will be. If a bottleneck gets sick, that’s a whole department that may be sneezing, not medically but operationally. That’s why saying that a low percentage of sick people is acceptable is absurd : if the virus hist the rong right people, it will sure bring panic onboard.
The moral is that everything has to de done to prevent contamination and spreading while securing business continuity. Of course, many people need to be in the workplace to get their job done, but for the others it may be the right time to admit that an employee under visual control is an employee at risk.
So I invite you to read this “check list” proposed by Jane McConnell. Who said your intranet was not mission critical ?
If you are interested in this kind of topic, you can learn more about business continuity from…Gartner.
By the way…what do you or your company plan ?
A H1N1, épidémie, collaboration, grippe, grippe porcine, intranet, pandémie,continuité
