According to recent google reports, 114 countries have reported that 1,18,000 have contracted Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, known as SARS-CoV2. Nearly 4,300 people have died.
Introduction
Where does the world catch an invisible threat? Though global shared services organizations have been pursuing cyber security for a long time and have taken measures to defend themselves from digital virus attacks, the current situation is an unforeseen global health crisis, caused by a type of influenza virus.
Just a few weeks into the coronavirus-instigated health epidemic, people and companies across China were affected as a result of fears the pandemic is spreading rapidly. Governments have imposed closures, the parks, bus stations and airports are deserted and it is no longer a luxury to operate from home, but a necessity.
Pandemic risk management for business
A pandemic is an infectious disease that spreads quickly, and may pose a global threat. Pandemics will bring about social chaos and economic chaos. By upsetting the supply chain, and causing high absenteeism, they can seriously interrupt business operations. This can hinder your ability to provide your clients with products and services.
Managing the risks faced by a pandemic is crucial to the survival of businesses. A business continuity plan will help you handle the impacts of a pandemic and satisfy your employee legal responsibilities to ensure its protection.
Your business continuity plan will outline the risk management approach and an overview of the financial effect of your company. It will explain how the company plans to respond to an accident, outline a response plan and identify staff management and communication policies and procedures.
This guide outlines how the risk associated with a pandemic can be handled by your company.
COVID-19 and pandemic planning: How companies should respond
- Apply a people-first mindset : In a pandemic an organization’s very first priority would be the health and security of its employees. Employees can not concentrate on work-related tasks while their well-being and that of their families is at risk. Consequently, at the outset of a pandemic crisis, the crucial problem companies must answer is whether their workers are healthy, followed by whether they are available for critical functions. It’s important for businesses to be able to track the situation, have a healthy workplace and provide the help they need to their employees.
- Plan for geographical segmentation of functions and activities : Through a pandemic planning viewpoint, organizations will pay greater attention to the regional distribution of these vital operations and roles, and how they can be segmented into alternate locations and sites for job transition. As proactive risk management and as much as practicable, businesses will try to diversify supplier base, clients, and third-party service providers across geographies to prevent single points of failure and increased exposure due to market outages and geopolitical developments.
- Assess reliance on third parties : Organizations today have expanded interconnections with third parties, such as outsourced distributors, cloud service providers, data processors, aggregators, payment processors, and product and service distribution suppliers. Particularly vulnerable to pandemic events are certain third parties. Organizations need to have a comprehensive understanding of their critical third, fourth and fifth parties and their contingency systems, and have alternative plans, such as insource strategies or substitutability, if the ability of key third parties to provide services is compromised.
- Engage with customers : As found during natural disasters, consumers are usually more empathetic to decline or discontinue some goods and services during disturbances outside the control of a business that include concerns regarding life safety than they are to those viewed as preventable (e.g. network failures). We do expect accountability, however, and timely updates.
- Develop a robust communication strategy (including social media) : Good communications during any crisis are critical to preserving consumer trust, restoring morale and trust among workers, and sustaining market stability. Although organizations have a communications plan and defined contact points to communicate with internal and external stakeholders, the messaging is often incoherent and inopportune. Consistent messaging is important for businesses which have both retail and corporate customers. All outlets have to integrate (e.g. social media, customer contact centres, releases of public relations).
Few steps for the Leaders while Outsourcing
- Communicate with each and every employee to raise the awareness, enforce policies (e.g., travel restrictions) and familiarize them with available tools and resources
- 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
- Perform an immediate assessment of processes and functions with high manual intervention and critical third-party dependencies, especially in high vulnerability and impact locations, to understand key risks, including any single points of failure
- 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
- Identify potential policy exceptions and institute a crisis management exception approval process to manage such exceptions on an accelerated basis in each jurisdiction
- It is essential for a company to evaluate operations and knowledge flow in advance of outsourcing by creating a comprehensive product life cycle, “cradle to cradle” value stream maps with cross-functional team members, and to identify its current state and future core competencies.
- Comprehensive process breakdowns can bring to light activities that are vital to consumer value formation, but are either underperforming or considered to be the company’s non-core competencies.
- The long-term advantage of choosing a first-rate supplier partner is that it will grow over time, as will the efficiency of the expanded enterprise of an organisation.
Pandemics are a serious wake-up call for supply chain professionals and companies with global operations to develop several alternate sourcing and manufacturing plans in different regions of the world to mitigate the risk from such adverse conditions.
We at Let’s Nurture also provide various Outsourcing Services in various sectors like Mobile and Web App development, IoT App development and other ad-on services too. If you are really looking to take the advantage of Outsourcing Services, please call us at +1-902-620-9098 or mail to info@letsnurture.com