Here’s a checklist you can use to organize your pandemic planning preparations and evaluate their comprehensiveness and effectiveness.

PREPAREDNESS PLANNING CHECKLIST

OBJECTIVE #1: ORGANIZE

[  ] Pick an already existing committee or assemble a new group that includes the safety coordinator, the person in charge of emergency planning (if that person isn’t the safety coordinator) and somebody familiar with labour issues. Involve the JHSC as part of the planning process.

[  ] Appoint a senior management official to head the planning team.

[  ] Establish contacts to monitor workers’ health in each business unit.

[  ] Establish a contact to stay in touch with the state Health Department or provincial Ministry of Health and other reliable public sources of information about the influenza situation nationally, in your state or province and your community.

OBJECTIVE #2: ASSESS RISKS

[  ] Gauge the vulnerability of each business unit, operation and facility. For example, are there certain facilities of your company that the Department of Health might order shut down during a pandemic?

[  ] Gauge the vulnerability of your business if influenza threatened the viability of any unit, operation and facility. Think of ways—such as opening an alternate facility—to keep operations going with minimal disruption in response to problems that may arise.

[  ] Consider what role, if any, the government might call on you to play during a crisis. For example, might the government take over parts of your workforce or facility to perform emergency services?

OBJECTIVE #3: PROTECT YOUR WORKERS’ HEALTH

[  ] Educate your workers about personal hygiene and other measures for guarding against the risk of infection, including:

[ ] Hand washing
[ ] “Cough etiquette”
[ ] Social distancing
[ ] Proper use of PPE
[ ] Vaccination
[ ] Precautions for workers planning to travel to affected areas.

[  ] Keep your workers apprised of recent developments, both public and within your workplace.

[  ] Post the location of hospitals, clinics, public health authorities and other health resources in your community.

[  ] Establish and maintain communication with workers who are absent due to infection.

[  ] Implement basic hygiene measures, such as providing soap, anti-bacterial products and paper towels and keeping sinks and surfaces that people touch, e.g., door knobs, clean.

[  ] Post signs, posters and notices reminding workers to wash their hands properly, use cough etiquette, keep social distances, etc.

[  ] Adopt work practices that promote social distance, for example, using conference calls instead of face-to-face meetings.

[  ] Adopt design measures, such as keeping workstations as far apart as possible.

[  ] Screen workers and visitors entering the workplace for signs of influenza.

[  ] Provide workers with protective gloves, surgical masks and other PPE.

OBJECTIVE #4: ADJUST YOUR HR POLICIES

[   ] Ensure that policies allowing for social distancing or quarantining are consistently enforced and based on objective criteria so as to avoid liability for disability discrimination.

[   ] Ensure that policies regarding absenteeism don’t discriminate against workers with disabilities and accommodate each worker in accordance with his or her own unique condition and situation.

[  ] Ensure that policies and practices for obtaining, disclosing and using medical information about workers, e.g., to verify their illness and determine their needs for accommodation, comply with personal privacy laws.

[  ] [For Canadians] Ensure that policies and practices for disciplining workers who refuse to work because they fear exposure to H1N1 or other infectious illnesses comply with workers’ refusal rights under OHS laws.

[  ] Ensure that company’s use of temporary workers to replace absent workers is permissible under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.

[  ] Ensure that arrangements that require workers to put in longer hours to make up for labor shortfalls comply with maximum hours restrictions under the fair labor practices and employment standards law.

[  ] Ensure that workers get all the overtime they’re entitled to for the extra hours they’re working.

[   ] Ensure that workers who contract the illness or take off work to care for a family member who does get the unpaid leave rights they’re entitled to under FLSA/ESA laws and their contracts.

OBJECTIVE #5: PLAN TO KEEP BUSINESS RUNNING

[  ] List crucial business functions that pandemic influenza might disrupt.

[  ] Determine which functions are a priority to maintain and which you can do without, if necessary.

[  ] Identify the skills and personnel needed to keep the priority functions running.

[  ] Look for alternative sources to replace the skills and personnel associated with such functions on a short-term basis.

[  ] Develop a plan to modify, reduce or halt specific functions—or even close the business temporarily—to cope with the impact of a pandemic-related disruption.

[  ] Establish an organizational structure to coordinate the emergency response and continuity of operations.

OBJECTIVE #6: PREPARE FOR SERVICE & SUPPLY DISRUPTIONS

[   ] List all outside suppliers of critical goods, materials and services to your organization.

[  ] Identify alternative sources for those goods and services and/or start building (or adding to existing) stockpiles and reserves.

[  ] Make sure your business has access to contingency funds so it can meet payroll, pay its contractors and meet other critical financial obligations.

OBJECTIVE #7: PREPARE FOR ABSENCES

[  ] Determine the minimum staff you need to maintain critical business functions.

[  ] Identify the credentials workers need to fill those functions, such as licenses to operate heavy machinery.

[  ] Start looking for sources of labor to meet those needs. Consider both internal—bringing back retirees or retraining existing workers—and external sources.

[  ] Make sure you have an infrastructure to train and support replacement workers.

OBJECTIVE #8: ESTABLISH LINES OF COMMUNICATION WITH WORKERS

[  ] Develop the means to communicate with your workforce in case of a pandemic.

[  ] Make sure you have a system for briefing workers as to developments, both public and within your workplace.

[  ] Establish a method for remaining in contact with workers who fall ill or take absences to care for others.

OBJECTIVE #9: ESTABLISH LINES OF COMMUNICATION WITH BUSINESS PRINCIPLES

[   ] Identify your key customers, partners, suppliers and other business relations.

[   ] Establish secure means of communicating with those parties in the event of pandemic outbreaks.

OBJECTIVE #10: PREPARE A PLAN

[  ] Have planning team prepare a draft plan documenting your planning efforts and listing the results of all planning decisions undertaken in pursuit of Objectives 1 through 9.

[  ] Give the draft to senior managers, business unit leaders and the company’s health and safety committee or worker representative for internal review.

[  ] Give the draft to key suppliers, customers, partners and local government and health officials for external review.

[  ] Adopt appropriate changes in response to each review.

[  ] Acquaint workers and management with the details of the plan once it’s been approved.

[  ] Conduct drills to test the plan and adjust it to correct for any weaknesses revealed.

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