On Continuity Central this week an article has been published outlining a new insurance policy from Aon which will cover the costs of building closures to businesses as a result of the swine flu pandemic:
“Aon has created a stand alone insurance policy to reimburse companies for wages, fixed costs and extra expenses if they are unable to access their buildings due to government action.”
Hats off to Aon for identifying the gap in the market here as many generic insurance policies/ business interruption policies do not cover specific pandemic viruses, indeed they only usually cover costs caused by physical damage or ‘notifiable diseases’ which H1N1 does not always qualify for.
The new product from Aon is believed to be the first of its kind available to all kinds of industry, though the general target is for Retail, Transport and Manufacturing where employees would be hard pushed to fulfill their roles from home. I’m sure many of the 100 shops in Princes Street, Edinburgh which suffered a power cut during peak business hours this week, would now be very keen to take up such a policy…
Continous working much better than re-couping costs
It’s great that these industries can now be protected for office/ building closure in this way, however for those industries such as service and finance there is always the option for employees to work from home or another remote office or location and I believe that these types of organisations should be focusing their attention far more on continuing to operate effectively as a business, rather than relying on insurance policies to cover any unexpected costs as a result of a building closure. After all, who wants to pay out twice or three times following a disruption? First for an insurance policy, then for the costs which are not covered by the policy, and finally for a more effective strategy which enables employees to continue working through a disruption whereby your costs are limited from the start.
If organisations had a seamless way of working, regardless of whether their premises could be accessed or not, there would be no need for reliance on such insurance policies to cover unexpected costs.
Tags: business continuity, flexible working, h1n1, home working, pandemic flu guidelines for business, swine flu
