As Mexico City citizens, government and businesses are finding, it doesn't take a full-blown pandemic to throw your operations into a mess. Since most NFP organisations are already dealing with vulnerable members of the community, being able to carry on working in an uncertain and disrupted environment will be crucial.

Gartner research director Steve Bittinger said the unfolding situation in Mexico is an "indicator to pay attention" to business continuity plans. via Swine flu forces remote work tool review.

Most of those [plans] developed with Avian influenza or SARS in mind should be applicable in the event of a local outbreak or pandemic of Swine flu.

Those without existing plans should look to companies in the same industry or to existing knowledge libraries over the next few weeks to prepare, Bittinger said.

"Handling Swine flu from an IT perspective is about enabling people to continue to work together or collaborate with reduced levels of face-to-face interaction," he said.

"It's a good idea to have work-from-home capabilities ready for staff. Executives need to think about how they would do business if the level of face-to-face contact with customers and staff drops dramatically.

"For example, there may be high rates of people not wanting to come into the office because they don't want to ride public transport, or they have a sick child or are sick themselves.

"It may be that this all fizzles out or we may have a week or several weeks to get our act together before or if it hits. Organisations that have the ability for staff to work from home [in the event of an outbreak or pandemic] won't suffer as badly as those who don't."

This is certainly true in the low threat levels currently affecting even Mexicans, but if a full pandemic hits, all bets are off, the Telecommunications systems may last as little as 5 days.

Bittinger said it's "almost too late" for companies without remote working tools to put them in place in time - although he admitted some low cost options such as Google Apps might be suitable.

[...] But he warned it was not the time "to try and reinvent the wheel" when it comes to business continuity.

Bittinger advised large organisations to appoint someone to stay on top of the issue internally, coordinate business continuity planning (and potentially implementation) and be "organisationally responsible" for the issue.

A review of the plans and having someone unflappable responsible for monitoring, keeoping staff updated about implications for your operation and having pre-set transition points to higher level responses will at least help you deal with those moments effectively.

A key area is your client contact systems. Cellphones and txt messages may be important both for contacting and handling cases, as well as organising staff who can't come into the office.

• Do you have protocols and systems for shifting to those tools should they be needed?
• Do staff know how to operate those reduced systems?
• Do they have enough credit on their cellphones to see them through a month of disrupted business systems?

Any more ideas for slimming down your operation and scattering your staff through the countryside? Comments are open.

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