Despite continuity planning for Bird Flu being such a vogue topic in the boardroom these days and there being a frightening jump in lay-offs following 'other' operational disruptions, to many business managers it is still low on their priorities list. An agenda item which never gets resolved and never seems to go away. Until it's too late.

While many professionals view Bird Flu planning as just emergency response like any other, business continuity planning generally or, as a simply a business issue, true crisis planning is multi-faceted and should be thoroughly integrated into the organisation's structure and operations. This is true for Bird Flu as much as any other continuity planning. A definition of contingency planning is a possibility which must be prepared for; a future emergency. To arrive at an effective level of crisis planning requires a thorough internal analysis, strategic thinking and sufficient discussion, with everyone speaking the same language.

As an umbrella term, crisis planning encompasses all activities involved when a business responds to a significant incident (this includes bird flu) with an effective crisis planning program in sync with the organisation's mission and integrated plans covering emergency response, business continuity, crisis communications, disaster recovery, staff safety, system security, humanitarian help, etc.

Because disruptions will inevitably arise, business managers cannot shrug the responsibility planning for them by blaming the 'unpredictability' of a disruption as the reason no contingency plans were in place. Nowadays that is not acceptable, and many business managers find themselves on the job market again when the disruption results in substantial losses to the company, its stakeholders and employees. Time is now to review business continuity planning and change your plans to suit the threat.

Planning for a Bird Flu pandemic is a prime example. When it does eventually sweep around the planet, which business manager will be able to stand up to his/her superiors and state they didn't know it was coming so didn't do any planning for it?

The argument that if a Bird Flu pandmic does happen it will be such a calamity it's not worth planning for in the first place is also flawed. It is true that everyone exposed to the virus will catch it, but the most likely scenario is that most of the population will suffer no symptoms whatsoever, a smaller percentage will suffer varying degrees of sickness but will recover completely, and only a very small percentage will lose their lives.

This doesn't mean however that a Bird Flu pandemic will not severely impact on every business on the planet regardless. The hype and fear alone will grind things to a halt even if the damage being done by Birdflu is only light. Experience with SARS is testament to this, where panic alone brought the economy (in Hong Kong) to a standstill even though relatively speaking only an extremely small number of persons became infected.

Bird Flu will not come and go in a few weeks. Previous global pandemics have shown they last approximately 18 months and will come in waves of three or more. Human nature is also such that once the initial panic is over people will learn to live with it and try to resume their normal lives, albeit stunted by additional precautions either self-imposed or imposed by regulators trying to inhibit the spread of infection.

This 'return to normality' could take place in a matter of weeks, and employees will want to return to the workplace if they are confident all is being done in the workplace to protect them. If a business does its planning properly, operations will resume very quickly once the panic subsides. If a business starts its planning at that point it will take much longer to recover, and perhaps never recover if much of the equipment and expertise they need is not available as prior panic buying has exhausted supplies and expertise.

These businesses will lose market share to their Bird Flu prepared competitors who are enjoying service continuity, and the business managers who did do adequate planning will not be able to defend themselves in the aftermath, when the finger pointing starts and someone else needs to be burdened with blame. Make sure that isn't you.