Pandemic planning: why working from home may not be an effective solution

By Jeff Charlton.

Many corporate pandemic plans are predicated on enabling employees to work from home during a severe pandemic ‘flu outbreak. But little analysis seems to have been carried out into what the impacts will be of a surge of home workers on corporate provision and Internet infrastructure; as well as what effect societal influences may have on the success of such a policy. The following provides a checklist of items that should be considered before giving the green-light to a work from home strategy:

* Is the home-worker’s software and hardware compatible with your work system?

* Will there be sufficient bandwidth available? Typically when a local service becomes overloaded systems fail. Clear examples of this are when you try to use your mobile telephone on New Year’s Eve and discover that the network is unavailable; or how home broadband speeds become significantly slower during school holidays when thousand more users are downloading films etc.

* There is a high probability that in a severe pandemic Internet service providers will be affected by absenteeism too; with the result that their services may be less reliable, with downtime taking longer to resolve than is usual.

* Health and safety legislation (the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations in the UK) requires that suitable risk assessments are made regarding the workplace, (ergonomics, lighting etc.) What assessments of the employees’ home work place have been made for those expected to work from home during a pandemic plan invocation?

* Who will organize work-loads and at what level? Will management be able to control and review tasks?

* What procedures exist to replace managers who may become ill? If managers are not replaceable, what impact will this have on the home-working workforce?

* Some companies have planned to utilise their contracted recovery facility / hot site. If this is the case, what service guarantees are in place from the service supplier? Will all the contracted seats be available, or just a proportion? What are the supplier’s pandemic plans and what impact will these have on service levels?

* Just how much business will be available and should the management consider mothballing the company for the short term rather than run at a loss; especially when long lead times exist?

* Lastly, in the face of massive potential disruption will you really be able to trust people to do the ‘Right Thing’? Can you afford to pay sickness benefits or full pay for minimal work? How will you measure and monitor the amount of work being carried out?

Author: Jeff Charlton is managing director of 999 Team. For practical pandemic planning solutions see the free PowerPoint and video section of the www.999team.org website.

•Date: 12th November 2009• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: Pandemic planning
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