“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.

There were a number of speakers throughout the day with reports on:
– The Tripartite run excersises
– The threat of cyber attacks – KPMG
– The swine flu pandemic update from the Cabinet Office
– How the City of London police managed the G20 protests
– The plans for the Olympics from a transport point of view and of course a presentation by our man Graham Chick on how flexible working is the only true way of coping with a disruptive event.

My overall impression of the event was that though the talks, particulalry on the Olympics and the G20 protests, were very interesting, the presentations didn’t offer anything too ground breakingly new. However what was encouraging was the number of people who could see the benefit of a rapid notification product to be used at the beginning of a disruptive event to communicate to employees simultaneously advising them what to do. The penny does seem to be dropping that telecoms continuity is a neglected area and needs addressing which is really encouraging to see.

It was interesting to see the plans the Olympic commitee are making to keep transport moving during the Games especially as I’m sure this will have a big impact on organisations in the London area. A dedicated ORN (Olymoic Route Network) will be instated inlcuding some dedicated ‘Olympic lanes’ on certain roads. Also encouaging is that road works will be managed such that there will be no roadworks wherever possible in central London during the Games.

A presentation from Standard Chartered picked out some very interesting lessons from their flu pandemic planning, including advice for multinational organisations to consider the actions of foreign governments and how they deal with infection. He quoted the hotels in China which the government there quarantined for 7 days and how offices, hotels and areoplanes can all be subject to containment if just 1 case of flu is diagnosed. The knock on effects this can have on organisations’ regional offices could be major.

If you were at the event what did you make of it, was there anything valuable or interesting which you can use in your organisation? Would love to hear your feedback and also what you would want to hear about next year.

1. Identify which employees can easily work from home. Working from home should provide the employee with the ability to undertake the vast majority of their normal job responsibilities, particularly if they are desk based. This is easily achieved by equipping them with secure data access and a telecoms system which enables them to answer their incoming calls just as if somebody was calling them at their normal place of work. This technology is easy to implement and is fast becoming the norm for many organisations.

2. Define the nature of the work to be undertaken by each employee and you will be able to provide the IT and telecoms tools necessary to seamlessly continue undertaking their job from home, as if they were at their desk in their normal place of work. You may wish to consider implementing tools such as incoming call re-routing and wireless/ 3G data connection applications delivering secure access to your corporate network.

3. Develop a checklist or agreement so that both employer and employee understand the terms under which home working is allowed. As a consequence, employees will then understand how home working will be managed and facilitated by the employer, because safety and security is crucial within such an arrangement.

4. Consider any other issues, such as how costs for heating, lighting, phone bills, and broadband access may be re-imbursed to the employee.

5. Consider how the employee will securely access corporate data and systems, such as via a corporate and secure VPN or secure web based email systems. Don’t forget to ensure a company directory of contact information is readily available.

6. In order to ensure home workers don’t feel isolated and to facilitate meetings you may want to make tele/ web conferencing or regular email/ web chat and Intranet communication available. These tools are easy to implement and relatively cheap. Some web conferencing packages offer free 30 day trials.

7. Communicate health and safety requirements for minimum home working standards and ensure employees comply. This is not as daunting as it appears. What you require for your employees in the office is just the same as what you would require for employees at home, including risk assessments. It’s just at a different location.

8. Ensure that employees can receive their incoming calls. Customers and suppliers should not be given a new number to call, they should be able to get through to the person they have dialled on their regular published contact number, rather than a new mobile or landline number to ensure seamless customer service and business continuity. This also protects the privacy of the employee by not publishing their personal mobile or home phone numbers to the public.

9. Management of home workers is not difficult as long as regular communication between team leader and employees is maintained. For the manager who fears losing control, secure voice recording of re-routed phone calls is easy to introduce as is keyboard key stroke monitoring.

10. Finally don’t expect sick employees, or carers to be accessing their emails as regularly as if they were in the office. You are giving them the tools to allow them to do what they can within a relationship of trust. Even if they are only able to work for example at 30% capacity every day, this could save your organisation between 7 and 10 days worth of 30% capacity which you would have lost were they not able to work from home!

If you found these tips useful, you may also wish to visit our blog for future tips and helpful advice on flexible working and the flu pandemic:

Recession and Swine Flu: A lethal combination?
Swine Flu: A greater threat than terrorism?
Swine Flu: Will your organisation survive?
Swine Flu Pandemic: Would Your Employees Take Advantage?

Author: Karen Jones

At a time when job security is at its lowest and few people want to be in the front of the queue for redundancy, how many of those people will want to take time off sick with swine flu for fear of possible repurcussions? What organisations could find is that sick employees will be forcing themselves into the office in order to show that both they and their jobs are indispensable. Such behaviour will lead to a longer and more impacting flu pandemic and, as sky news also reports, could lead to the recession lasting a couple of years longer than expected and a decrease in UK GDP of around -7.5 per cent.

Additionally if businesses cannot fulfil their contractual obligations becasue their employees are off sick, they may find legal action taken against them from customers and suppliers. How many companies can afford such liability in the current climate?

I would suggest that managers overtly show that presenteeism is not a key criteria for discerning between those who should be protected from redundancy, and those that shouldn’t, and I belive that offering to let employees work from home communicates that they are trusted, appreciated, and that they feel needed by the organisation through these difficulat economic times.

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