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Business Continuity Guidance for Businesses

Large-scale temporary absence of staff

Underpinning risks:

The primary risk underpinning this effect is the possible emergence of an influenza pandemic – that is, the rapid worldwide spread of influenza caused by a novel virus to which people would have no immunity, resulting in more serious illness than caused by seasonal influenza. An influenza pandemic would affect young, old and working populations without discrimination.

During a pandemic, staff will be absent from work if:

1. They are ill with flu. Numbers in this category will depend on the clinical attack rate. If the attack rate is 50%, half of staff in total will be sick (and hence absent from work for a period) over the whole course of the pandemic.
2. They need to care for children or other family members who are ill with flu.
3. They need to care for (well) children because of local school closures.
4. They have non-flu medical problems.
5. Their employers have advised them to work from home.
6. They decide to absent themselves for other reasons.

Business continuity planning against an influenza pandemic should have at its heart an estimate, through aggregation of data in each of the categories above, of the number of staff likely to be absent from work at the peak of the pandemic. This will differ for each organisation depending on the make up of staff.

Employers should note that:

1. Depending on the rate of spread of the virus within the UK, levels of staff absence from work are unlikely to be uniform across the country. Employers with sites spread across the UK may experience peak rates of absence at different times in different regions.
2. Absentee rates could be higher than the estimates given here if the nature of the virus means that people take longer to recover from infection than the assumption shown above, or if some age groups of the population are affected more severely than others.

Although it is inherently difficult to predict the scale of effect that such a pandemic might have, this assumption is based on current Department of Health assumptions. For the most up-to-date information see the Department for Health Website or the UK resilience website.

Staff absence, with a lesser degree of impact, could result from a range of other risks:

• Outbreaks of other infectious diseases.
• Large scale transport disruption making it difficult for staff to get to work.
• Industrial action by staff.

BCM Implications:

In carrying out business continuity planning, organisations will wish to consider how best to:

1. Support the Government’s efforts to reduce the impact of the pandemic by:
   • Taking all reasonable steps to ensure that employees who are ill or think they are ill during a pandemic are positively encouraged not to come into work. Personnel policies may need to be reviewed to achieve this aim.
   • Ensuring that employers and employees are made aware of Government advice on how to reduce the risk of infection during a pandemic.
   • Ensuring that adequate hygiene (e.g. hand-washing) facilities are routinely available.
2. Put in place measures to maintain core business activities for several weeks at high levels of staff absenteeism, including options for remote working and expanding self-service and on-line options for customers and business partners.
3. Identify those essential functions and posts, and perhaps individuals, whose absence would place business continuity at particular risk.
4. Identify which services could be curtailed or closed down during all, or the most intense period, of the pandemic.
5. Ensure that health and safety responsibilities to employees continue to be fully discharged.
6. Identify inter-dependencies between organisations and ensure they are resilient, for example by ensuring that supplier organisations delivering services under contract have appropriate arrangements in place themselves to sustain their service provision.
7. Factor into their planning that medical counter-measures will not solve business continuity requirements because antiviral drugs for treatment will only lessen the severity of the illness. They will neither cure it nor significantly reduce absenteeism.

Refer to the Cabinet Office Pandemic Influenza Checklist for Business

Refer to the Cabinet Office guidance www.pfe.gov.uk/emergency/060710_revised_pandemic.pdf

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