Plan for absenteeism rates of more than 25% if a pandemic strikes. With October being the official kickoff of the annual flu season, some organizations are taking steps to prepare for a pandemic of the seasonal or avian flu by beefing up communications capabilities and planning for employees to work remotely. While IT administrators might be inclined to look at preparing for a pandemic much as they would for any other disaster, pandemics are different in several ways, said Steve Bittinger, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn. First, pandemics occur over a much longer period of time — weeks and months compared with the hours and days involved in a natural disaster or terrorist attack — but this also provides weeks in which to prepare, Bittinger said. Second, they can have a severe impact on employees’ attendance and customer purchases either because of sickness, fear of sickness or other limitations such as travel restrictions and quarantines, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Indian Health Service operates in 345 hospitals and clinics and 85 emergency management services, Ross said. Since February, he has been using a Pandemic Management and Notification Service from SWN Communications Inc. in New York.<\/p>\n
For commercial real estate company The Cadillac Fairview Corp. in Toronto, the focus this flu season is primarily on how to enable its 1,600 employees to work from home, said Scot Adams, CIO of business innovation and technology services. Adams said his company recently began using MobiKey, a wireless service from Route1 Inc., also in Toronto, that allows end users use a Universal Serial Bus device for remote computing.<\/p>\n
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