Pandemic planning

The uncertainty caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 amplifies the need for a coherent set of enterprise resilience capabilities and planning. The increased anxiety and demand for actions and plans from board members, regulators, clients and the market requires firms to ensure they have plans and understand the subsequent scenarios that can play out.

How to plan and respond differently to pandemics versus traditional resilience planning

• Apply a people-first mindset
• Plan for geographical segmentation of functions and activities
• Invest in technology and infrastructure to support remote work and virtual collaboration capabilities
• Consider the systemic nature of pandemics when designing response strategies
• Assess reliance on third parties
• Engage with customers
• Develop a robust communication strategy (including social media)
• Team with public sector; national, state and local agencies; and health officials
• Increase rigor and complexity of testing
• Leverage pandemic command center to prioritize and govern effectively
• Establish crisis management exception approval process

What should companies do now?

1. Communicate with employees to raise awareness, enforce policies (e.g., travel restrictions) and familiarize them with available tools and resources
2. If pandemic planning considerations have not been incorporated into existing business continuity and disaster recovery strategies or updated, begin rapid planning or refresh of pandemic strategies and actions
3. Perform an immediate assessment of processes and functions with high manual intervention and critical third-party dependencies, especially in highvulnerability and impact locations, to understand key risks, including any single points of failure
4. Review crisis communication plan and designate single points of contact to facilitate seamless engagement with local, national and global authorities, and other key internal and external stakeholders
5. Identify potential policy exceptions and institute a crisis management exception approval process to manage such exceptions on an accelerated basis in each jurisdiction
6. Confirm employees have the requisite capabilities, including access to requisite share drives, documents and other critical tools, to perform critical tasks remotely
7. Review relevant standard operating procedures and manuals and update them, as necessary
8.  Monitor the situation and provide regular briefings to leaders on any emerging threats and issues
9.  Ask employees to confirm and update contact information (primary and secondary) in company records, as necessary
10. Conduct brief pandemic training with employees to enhance employee and organizational preparedness to respond effectively

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