Introduction

Tropical Storm Debby is slowly meandering towards your major production facility. You dust off your continuity plan that you assisted in developing a few years back. It looks like you have everything in order and the storm looks like it will likely produce some large scale flooding, but major winds are not expected. You sit at your desk and think that you have it all covered. The phone rings and the corporate Vice President states that they have a major production concern and your facility is to maintain production during the storm. After all, it is just a heavy slow moving rain storm.

How are you going to ensure that you still have the work force to maintain the expectations of the corporate officers? Without manpower you can't maintain production. When you look at your continuity plan it covers all aspects of operations but is missing one major section "employee resilience". We went to all of the expense and time to develop plans for every foreseeable catastrophe, but we forgot the most important aspect of our business, OUR EMPLOYEES.

During this discussion the need, benefit of planning for, and developing employee addendums to our continuity plans will be stressed. Case histories of Public Service employees leaving their jobs during Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina will highlight the need of this critical phase of business continuity. Tweaking current plans to integrate corporate social responsibility will greatly enhance our employee/organizational relationships. Lastly, our employees have many concerns during catastrophic events. One of the major ones is, "Will I still have a job when this is over?" What better way to negate this fear than by actively utilizing your employees when it is safe and available.

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