Delivering Your Business In A Critical Environment.

Jamie Tomlin – Emergency Planning Officer

The Ripple Effect

The effects of any incident are varied and far reaching.

A flu pandemic is likely to impact on all aspects of society.

The main impacts

• Staff shortage

• Supplier contractor difficulties.

Staff Shortage

25 - 35% workforce off over 2-3 week period (in addition to normal absence)

• Directly ill (flu)• Secondary infection• Care for ill children or relatives• Care for non ill children or relatives (school

closure weeks 5-7).• Fear of flu• Transport difficulties

Suppliers and Contractors

• Fuel

• Food

• Medical supplies

• Health services

• Coroners

Critical functions

• What are your essential / critical functions.– Impact of not performing these functions.

• What are the component parts that make these functions happen (the ingredients)?

Ways of handling staff shortage

• Identify specialist skills

• Multi skill existing staff

• Identify additional sources of staff

• Written job procedures

• Shuffle the deck!!!

• Alter the frequency of functions– Daily visits become every other day

• Alter the method of delivering functions– Visits are replaced with telephone checks.

• There is no “one size fits all” solution.

Critical service users

• Can you prioritise service users in terms of their dependency on your services?

– Who has local friends and family– Who depends on specialist skills– Who MUST have a daily access to services?

Public access

How will you deal with visitors?

• Complete stop?

• PPE for visitors?

• Infection control for visitors?

Mass Gatherings

• What other business activities may have to cease to reduce risk of infection spread?– Social activities– Gatherings

– Libraries!

Island Mentality

Vs

Mutual Aid

Communications

Multi Agency command and control

LCC Children’s services

LCC ASC

ASC providers

Spanish flu

• 250,000 UK deaths

• The majority of which were not from flu but due to infrastructure failures.

Economic climate

• Will staff be less willing to take time off for fear of damage to their sickness record – potential for future job loss?

• Get your sickness policies sorted now.

Other staff shortage

Preparing for flu pandemic provides resilience against any staff shortage

• Weather incidents – snow

• Fuel disruption

• Seasonal flu / illness