Open to all Business Continuity and Incident Management Practitioners, the forum is presented as an exercise throughout the duration of the day, during which delegates will receive a series of injects as the scenario unfolds. After each stage of the scenario delegates will need to consider what steps they should take to mitigate the impact on their staff and business.

Delegates will be guided towards better practice by a panel of recognised industry speakers including emergency services, in-house BC practitioners and technology providers. The expert panels will be in place to highlight considerations and methods to meet the challenges, answer specific questions and discuss the responses that delegates have decided on.

With the excitement of a live event, this is a unique forum to test and develop knowledge of incident response methods and tools. All those involved in the organisation and running of the event are confident that practitioners at all levels of experience will leave with a better knowledge of how to manage an incident.

If you would like to participate in the event please call Natalie Thompson at GemaTech on 0845 3458714.

Remote working should not be seen as a ‘fad’ but as the 21st century way of doing business, for those jobs which are able to be conducted wherever a broadband or wifi connection is available. There seems to be an assumption that there are only two ways of working, office based or home based. I beg to differ, flexible working should be the norm, allowing employees and employers alike the choice on a day by day basis where work should be performed, be it 2 days in the office and 3 at home, or 1 day at a remote, satellite office and the rest of the week elsewhere.

Making it easy, and accesible for business to get done in a time and cost effective manner is the key here, not simply just a way of saving a few pounds in the short term!

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

Well yes and no. I think that this type of news is good in making us wake up and smell the coffee! The effects that this virus will have upon the UK population and economy are happening now, and will touch everyone in some way or another whether through family members or work colleagues. But a sense of perspective is also required. The majority of sufferers will only experience mild symptoms and should recover relatively quickly albeit at home in a quarantined environment.

The big question for UK organisations is ‘what is your flu pandemic strategy’? I have heard of one company where an entire department has been told to stay at home for ten days because of one case of swine flu in the office. Some may feel that this is an extreme measure, some may say that it is sensible. Personally I think that this is the right move to take. In times of recession when people fear losing their jobs, you will find that people will come into the office even when they are ill, fearing unemployment more than fearing spreading the virus.

It is management’s responsibility to protect its employees and to re-assure them that time taken off for swine flu will not be held against them. Organisations should be firmly in survival mode at this point in time, both financially and physically. The mere ability of enabling employees to answer their calls from home while recovering or caring for relatives, empowers management to show trust in their employees and consideration for its workforce. According to Flu Pandemic Guidelines For Business published by a former business continuity organisation called Survive, “As an employer you have a duty of care to provide your employees with a safe working environment…and you will instil confidence that the organisation has taken steps to protect their wellbeing” (p.31) The up-side for the organisation is that it can continue to operate seamlessly when the office is half empty.

Look out for a future blog which will outline the top ten tips for employing effective home working strategies to survive the swine flu pandemic.

Author: Karen Jones

These cases I think will become more and more common, particularly in the winter months. So how can organisations minimise their decrease in productivity? In a white paper I published recently on our GemaTech website titled ‘The adoption of flexible working is the key to your business surviving the current swine flu pandemic’, I stated that even the Health and Safety Executive as well as the Department of Health have issued advice to employers which include considering home-working and tele-conferencing to reduce face-to-face contact.

When mass absenteesim starts affecting customer service and the key systems and processes which an organisation relies upon, enabling people to work from home will go a long way to protecting brand and organisational reputation.

Author: Karen Jones