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March 24, 2006
Are you ready for Avian Flu?
Although I know none of us are looking for something extra to worry about at work or in our personal lives, I guarantee those of us in the area of internal communications will be spending significant amounts of time in the coming months supporting corporate teams preparing readiness plans to respond to a major outbreak of Avian Flu.
Watson Wyatt just released interesting survey results at http://www.watsonwyatt.com/news/press.asp?ID=15840 that essentially can be summed up as: "Companies are much more likely to already have plans in place (32 percent) in Asia-Pacific to deal with the effects of the avian flu. Only 15 percent have plans in place in the United States, 11 percent in Europe, 10 percent in Canada and 9 percent in Latin America. In addition, about one in five companies is not at all concerned about the avian flu."
You can get out ahead of this by asking some smart questions in your organization:
1. Do we have a central information point for employees to call into to register their whereabouts in times of emergency?
2. What plans and backup plans do we have to get information to employees quickly?
3. What information have we been sharing with employees about Avian Flu and how to prepare both at home and work for an outbreak?
While these questions are just the tip of the iceberg, they will at least provoke the beginning of some good discussion. My suggestion is to couch communications about Avian Flu in the larger context of crisis readiness and preparedness -- this can help people keep perspective and not feel panicked. I'll be blogging about this more in the coming weeks.
Posted by Christopher at March 24, 2006 9:05 AM
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Comments
The good news? Companies can dust off the unused Y2K plan.
The bad news? The date for 1/1/00 was easier to predict than Avian Flu.
Posted by: Ike at March 28, 2006 12:42 AM