Don’t Waste a Crisis
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“Don’t Waste a Crisis — Your Patient’s or Your Own.” M.F. Weiner, Medical Economics 53, no. 5, March 8, 1976.
Whether you attribute this quote originally to Winston Churchill or to several others who preceded him, its use in the medical world by Myron F. Weiner in an article published in the journal Medical Economics under the title “Don’t Waste a Crisis — Your Patient’s or Your Own” is a call to arms in the face of a potential global pandemic, the likes of which we have not seen since SARS or MERS. In speaking with a number of my colleagues in public health, emergency preparedness and business continuity, I hear different levels of pan-flu awareness and action. The time to act is now, as I covered in a recently posted podcast (note-this was an update from 2 years ago); good pandemic planning is business continuity planning. So, I am going to be concise and to the point on three major steps every organization should take to be prepared.
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Step 1. Gather Your Community
The first step is to look at your major enterprise stakeholders in terms of the critical groups to your value chain. There are the usual suspects: your essential staff (employees perhaps broken down by divisions/departments, etc.), key clients/customers, vendors/contractors, and any other partners or support services. Your organization may want to consider forming a cross-functional team to manage planning and responses- see step 2 below for communications.
Identify these groups and individuals by looking at whether they provide essential functions in your operations or in front-line delivery of products/services. This includes supporting these operations, for non-profits this may include volunteers.
It is important to identify those staff who have a leadership role and will make important decisions on resource allocation and actions during a crisis.
Make sure you have all their current contact information and consider running a check on this; a quick email, phone call (think call tree for emergencies).
Create a list of additional supplies you may need: immediately for your staff needs (emergency kits or “go-bags”), including household plan resources. If you have client facing operations, think of what you might need- disinfectant supplies, disposable surgical gloves, and if advised by health professionals: surgical masks. There may be other supplies such as foods and other items that are critical- medications, back-up batteries, etc. Note- ready.gov is a good source. More on supplies in continuity of operations in Step 3..
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Step 2: Communicate with your Community
Develop your communications strategy: what do you need to communicate (Continuity of Ops (COOP) info-see step 3), how will you communicate with them, and how often. Your organization may want to assign an individual or group to take on this communications responsibility, and employing a communications specialist may be best.
Determine what you need to communicate and make sure the message is focused (keep it simple-KISS): address the current situation, potential impacts and preparations for them (COOP), any health support (including psycho-social needs), personal and household preparations, general hygiene, and any incident specific training info.
Identify the communication channels: email, websites, intranets, social media posts, posters, flyers, group presentations. internal/external memos, press releases (for larger organizations),
Choose the frequency of your communication. This may vary by channel and audience, and you want to strike the right balance of release/repetition while avoiding being tuned out.
Emergency Operations Truck, Source: US Army Corp of Engineers
Step 3: Make a Plan for Continuity
Now we get to the who, what, and where of how you will need to sustain your continuity of critical operations. Most continuity planning begins with people, processes, and systems (including infrastructure), and then breaking things out from there, and, generally, a good solid plan may take, weeks, or months (perhaps a year or more) to develop, but for now, in the spirit of expediency, here are essential steps to consider:
What are your succession plans? Who will replace whom if critical people or groups of people get sick? Who will you be delegating your authority to (think senior leadership and critical personnel); who has access controls and the guidance to make decisions in your stead. Consider that 40% of your staff may fall ill in a true, global pandemic. Will you need replacement staff or reciprocal sites or production elsewhere to make up for shortfalls. . Just take a look at the what is happening in China right now. This can easily happen here in the USA or elsewhere, and more importantly, to your supply chain. In fact, it already is impacting global supply chains in particular in South Korea, and other parts of South and East Asia, and even in the USA. You will probably need to check with vendors/contractors/and critical service providers to see what their plans are.
What changes will you need to make to your human resource policies? Your organization may need to allow people to work from home and take extended leave (think sick leave+ FMLA+vacation), if they or their loved ones fall ill and need to be taken care of. Check with your healthcare plans and providers to know what coverages you have and what they may advise. Will you need to pay for overtime in case staff need to work additional shifts during a crisis or staff absences? As above, make sure that any succession plans and/or delegations of authority are put in writing, disseminated, and trained on.
Make sure staff expectations are communicated, including training staff on pandemic preparations, personal health and well-being (including psycho-social needs), This may include a need for cross-training, training on orders of succession/delegations of authority, or contingency operations/services/systems.
Make sure you budget time and money to cover additional costs: materials and supplies as mentioned earlier- personal protective equipment (PPE), additional tech., equipment, and spaces that may be needed.
Reach out to partners: industry associations, chambers of commerce, government agencies, and other organizations that may have vital information and resources that you may need.
If time allows, then drill and exercise on the plan; this can be a simple half-day or multi-day table top exercise or be more involved; it just depends on how you want to allocate resources to prepare in advance.
Quick Recap in the Form of a Checklist:
Identify leadership roles and put together a cross-functional pandemic planning team.
Identify the key stakeholder groups in your value chain: essential staff, clients/customers, vendors/contractors, and other partners and support services; gather their contact info. and test the communication channels (see below).
Identify additional supplies you might need for the pandemic.
Develop your pandemic communications strategy: keep the messages focused, identify all communication channels (redundancy is alright), and choose the frequency of communication.
Make a pandemic continuity plan: succession planning, delegations of authority, changes to HR policies that are needed to handle work from home arrangements, potential high absenteeism, and possible overtime or additional temporary staffing.
Develop and deliver training on the plans, including cross-training, and on how the mechanism will work for orders of succession/delegations of authority, or contingency operations/services/systems.
Budget for time and money to cover the additional costs from items above.
Reach out to partners in your industry and government for additional resources and guidance.
Run a drill or exercise to test your level of pandemic preparedness.
If you need help with planning, want a review, or are looking to run a drill or exercise, just give me a call and we can chat further.
Final and last note: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.