Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary has publicly stated that Swine Flu is a greater threat to the UK than terrorism. As always a certain amount of perspective needs to be added around this statement. In the National Risk Register, published by the Cabinet Office, the likelhood of an attack on transport, crowded places or via an electronic means is actually higher than that of pandemic influenza. However, the relative impact upon the UK population and economy is far higher for flu than it is for terrorist activities. So yes, the threat of catching the flu virus has a greater impact on far more people than an isolated terrorist attack would have.
In light of this information I believe that for UK businesses and organisations, more emphasis should be placed on managing the impact of a flu pandemic, than is placed on disaster recovery for terrorist attacks, certainly at the present time. That is not to say that other disruptive events should be dis-regarded, but that the top priority for now, the winter, and possibly further into next year, is to protect our employees and build in business continuity into all systems and processes to ensure the smooth running of public and private sector services.
Of course the upside for having a robust business continuity plan in place for the swine flu pandemic is that employees are, by default, also prepared for more major disruptive events which, though shocking for an organisation, should take away the uncertainty of what unaffected employees should be doing in the aftermarth of a terrorist attack to their business district, or office building. By ensuring that call re-routing from office phones to alternative mobile or landline numbers becomes a buisness-as-usual activity, the ability for employees to adapt to changing work circumstances is greatly increased, resulting in the time between a disruption and getting an organisation back to normal, to be greatly decreased.
Author: Karen Jones
Tags: business, business continuity, call re-routing, disaster recovery, flexible working, home working, remote working, swine flu
