Feds Want Small Firms Prepared For H1N1
Sep 21st, 2009 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: Politics & PolicyEarlier this month, the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing to look into the challenges that face small businesses during this year’s flu season, particularly with the H1N1 virus making the rounds. According to government witnesses from the Departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security, an H1N1 pandemic can have several unfortunate impacts on small businesses and, thus, on the economy. Those potential impacts include increased worker absenteeism, disrupted business operations, declining consumer spending, disrupted supply chains and decreased output across the entire economy. All of which our still-struggling economy needs like a hole in the head.
Government witnesses emphatically suggested cross-training employees, so that operations could continue even when key employees had to be absent due to illness (their own or a family member). Other suggestions included having unwell-but-functional employees work from home, and using joint ventures to keep your firm at its normal capacity. That should be fairly easy for microbusinesses, since they tend to do all that anyway. In addition, there were the usual precautions: frequent hand washing, cover coughs, wash commonly handled items often, and stay home if you’re sick. For more information and resources to help microbusinesses to craft a preparedness plan, the Obama Administration has characteristically got a web site set up at www.flu.gov.
