Contingency Planning for Pandemic Influenza
Introduction
The hotel industry constitutes one of the industries directly affected by the occurrence of a pandemic influenza. In recognition of this risk, one hotel has developed a contingency plan to deal with pandemic influenza. The contingency plan comprises of seven steps developed by the hotel to ensure its preparedness in case of the occurrence of this health issue. The justification for the development of the contingency plan is the recognition that pandemic influenza occurring in the immediate vicinity or in close proximity to the hotel would have serious impacts on the health and safety of hotel employees and existing customers and adversely affects the traffic of business travellers and tourists to the area and the hotel. Contingency planning is important to ensure that the hotel has a plan it can follow to survive the pandemic influenza.
1. Situation Assessment
As the first step in the contingency plan, this stage involves two steps. First is obtaining confirmation from the authorities that pandemic influenza has occurred by gathering as much information from the news and government agencies on a possible pandemic influenza and coordinating with appropriate agencies to facilitate open lines of communication for updates. After confirming that a pandemic influenza is occurring, the second step is determining the status of the hotel in relation to the occurrence of the pandemic in terms of the business processes experiencing the greatest risk, whether the situation depends upon the readiness of the hotel or its business partners, and assessment of the current financial status to determine whether existing firm resources can meet emerging financial conditions.
2. Risk Assessment
After determining the business processes facing the greatest risk, the next step is to evaluate the likelihood of risk actualisation and the impact of the problems likely to arise. In accomplishing this, the hotel should use risk assessment measures such as classifying the likelihood of risk actualisation as low, moderate or high with descriptions for each level of risk actualisation to ensure easy application. The hotel should also apply risk actualisation standards used by government agencies and international bodies. To determine the extent of risk actualisation, the hotel also needs to consider the situation of its business partners to determine their respective readiness levels and determine the impact to the hotel. During this stage, documentation is important to collate all the communications and responses during the internal meetings and meetings with business partners. The next step is to determine risk areas with high risk exposure, especially those with the greatest impact on the hotel’s cash flow. Risk evaluations would serve as the basis for controlling and managing the cash flow.
3. Action Plan
The third step is the formulation of the action plan that involves strategies that prevents risk actualisation as well as reduces the impacts of risk actualisation. One strategy that should be applied by the hotel is the establishment of a team to monitor the occurrence of risk factors and manage the activities of the organisation in case of a pandemic influenza. The team is composed of representatives from the accounting, human resources, marketing, and customer service departments. Having a pre-determined team to handle the contingency would ensure that when a pandemic influenza happens, there is a ready team to take over the management of the contingency. Each of the members of the contingency team hold the responsibility of sharing information on risk evaluations from their respective departments to the team and considering the information on the overall situation of the hotel in taking action to allocate budget or handle changes in the organisation possible restructuring. Another strategy that could be applied by the hotel is establishing additional communication lines to accommodate customer service and other external communication traffic in case the pandemic occurs. This would allow the hotel to accommodate the rise in communication traffic during the contingency. Still another strategy is informing and training customer service staff to handle any possible question or issues raised by hotel customers in case of the occurrence of a pandemic influenza together with the training of human resource staff to handle issues and problems arising with the ranks of the employees of the hotel. Another strategy is that the hotel should establish a contingency fund as a form of savings in order to always have a source of finances needed in handling the impacts of pandemic influenza. Lastly, the hotel should establish an in-house clinic in order to facilitate the testing of employees and customers and isolate those from the people without symptoms of the new strain of influenza. The medical team would also take charge of coordinating with local hospitals for the treatment of the people infected with influenza.
The action plan should be divided into three phases, which are: 1) pre-incident phase that involves the listing of worst cases, problems and alternative solutions; 2) incident phase that covers the execution of the actual plan including specific activities and roles, and the listing of all important contacts such as team members, other managers and employees, media, government agencies, and business partners; 3) post-incident phase that involves a timescale for the completion of all activities and achievement of results until hotel operations have normalized.
4. Plan Activation Timeframe
The fourth step involves the determination of the time when the contingency plan commences to apply and the period for its application. The hotel should determine when the contingency plan would apply and the contingency team takes over by identifying measures such as when revenue generation has reached a certain floor value, customer traffic has slowed by more than fifty percent, and the finances of the hotel is no longer sufficient to support the continued operations of the hotel at its current rate of resource allocation. The hotel should determine before hand the triggers it will use to commence the operation of the contingency plan. The hotel should be able to determine the period covering the duration and termination of the plan by again identifying trigger factors such as the stabilization of the financial situation of the company and a certain percentage of increase in the customer traffic of the hotel. Declarations by the local and international health organisations and the industry also serve as important triggers.
5. Plan Communication
After developing the initial steps, especially the action plan, the hotel have to communicate the plan to key members of the organisation in order to ensure a coordinated action in case of the actualisation of pandemic influenza. First thing to be communicated to the participants is information on pandemic influenza, the manner that this contingency develops, and the impact of the contingency to stakeholders including the hotel, employees and customers. Next thing to be communicated is the content of the draft plan together with the specification of the role expectations for the different departments and individual managers or employees. This could also constitute a means of deriving feedback from the participants for the improvement of the contingency plan. Communication of the plan can happen through a hotel sponsored seminar for managers, who will take charge of sharing information to the people under them. This is important to ensure that all the people with roles in the contingency plan know about the plan and their respective roles in the event of its application.
6. Plan Testing
Since the contingency plan has been communicated to the people with important roles in the process, the next step is testing the viability of the contingency plan. At the most, the hotel can implement a simulation activity to test the likely situations that the hotel would experience in the event of a pandemic influenza by using actors in a role playing activity. This could be part of the seminar or scheduled in the daily operations of the hotel. This is necessary to determine the level of preparedness of the people charged with important roles in the contingency plan and the likely result of their actions. At the least, the hotel can test the contingency plan in a meeting by running down some of the likely situations and having the managers describe their responses. The managers could also give constructive comments on the answers of the other participants to ensure that all perspectives such as financial and human resource perspectives are heard. This also facilitates the development of coordinative relationships among the managers who are also members of the contingency team.
7. Continuous Development of the Contingency Plan
It is not certain when a pandemic influenza would happen but it is important that the hotel has a contingency plan. It can happen that after the development and testing of the plan, there are innovations on risk analysis measures and processes for health-related contingencies together with changes in the organisational structure of the hotel. This means that the hotel has to consider its contingency plan as evolving so that the plan should be reviewed as developments occur. This can even involve a revision of strategies that need to be communicated again to the people with important roles in the process.
Conclusion
To handle contingencies, especially pandemic influenza with serious consequences to the business firm, the development of a contingency plan is required. In the case of the hotel, the steps above ensure that the hotel develops a contingency plan known and understood especially by the management team together with strategies intended to ensure the viability of the hotel.
Reference
Childs, D., & Dietrich, S., 2002. Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business Guide. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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