The Swine Flu – A Case For Telework

The Swine Flu - A Case for Telework and BCP!

10 Steps to Prepare:

We’ve been talking for years about the need to integrate Telework into our normal operations to reduce the impacts of biological, chemical, or nuclear events, including the potential for pandemic outbreak.  Just last month, bills were introduced in both houses of Congress to increase the number of home based Government employees.

With the threat of the first major pandemic outbreak since the Hong Kong Flu epidemic from 1968 to 1969, a flu which killed over 750,000 people, Telework is the best solution to minimize exposure and maintain productivity.

While supporting technologies continue to evolve and the cost of facilitating ongoing, uninterrupted, remote access has become increasingly affordable, we find that as a nation we are grossly unprepared to deal with the potential effects of a Pandemic outbreak.

To ensure business viability and protect the health and safety of your employees, here are 10 steps you should consider:

Keep employees informed of the risk environment and direct them to health and safety responses recommended by the Federal Government.

1. Craft and/or enforce policy that allows critical personnel to work remotely.  
2. Use Virtual Private Network (VPN) to facilitate secure remote access.
3. Train approved personnel on the use of remote access tools and implement the immediate, though staggered, use of your teleworking tools and techniques.
4. Increase and/or test bandwidth to ensure that all critical personnel are able to VPN-in simultaneously and work effectively.
5.  Virtualize critical vital records and web-enable them.
6. Consider web-based-applications for document management, enterprise resource management, and timekeeping.
7. Consider the use cloud platforms as a long term solution to make critical web applications available and accessible remotely.
8. Include telework capability in business continuity plans and implement as appropriate.
9. Place the health and security of your personnel first! 

A measured approach to Business Resilience:

In addition it is imperative that companies take a measured approach to preparedness.  This would require taking steps necessary to develop a fully functional business continuity plan.  This can be done in 5 steps and is far less time consuming and complex than most of us think and most consultants would ever let on.   Here they are:

1. Understand risk environment – conduct an analysis of your operational and environmental risks that take action to mitigate as many of them as possible prior to developing a BCP.  Many of most potent risks today (in terms of both likelihood and impact) involve technology failures, so pay particular attention to IT infrastructure, policies, and procedures.  It is, however, important to consider all risks to your facilities, personnel and supply chain as well.
2. Conduct Business Impact Analysis – This is an analysis of operations to evaluate what functions must be resumed and in which order to minimize the risk of failure after a disruptive event.  The BIA must consider the time sensitivity of your processes and evaluate resources that are necessary to support those processes, including vital records, operational resources, vendors, and policies and procedures.  The BIA should yield recovery time objectives which form the framework around which you would develop continuity strategies.
3. Develop Overarching Business Continuity Plans - These plans should identify your organizations Crisis Management strategy including the sequence of activities to activate the plan, the leadership strategy during and after a disruptive event, and related plans to ensure organization resilience.  These would include succession plans, delegations of authority, and fully fleshed out communications strategies.
4. Develop Business Unit Continuity Plans – These are plans that specify how and when specific business unit operations shall be resumed after a disruptive event.
5. Develop and Implement a Training, Testing, and Exercise Program – A plan is useless without a well thought out and implemented TT&E program.  This would ensure that the various players understand their roles in the event of a real disruption, and would test the effectiveness of the plan, providing an opportunity to make refinements and updates prior to a real event.

Conclusion:

Whatever your business and wherever you are in the preparedness process, teleworking is a cost effective, scalable, and proven method for ensuring that some parts of your organization can continue operating in most circumstances.  The escalating threat of the Swine Flu, however, reminds us that other failures are also possible.  It is hence prudent that companies weave telework into a broader resilience strategy.