MHA in working with clients, speaking with colleagues and researching trends, see a number of common themes and issues impacting how companies are addressing the pandemic:
- Knowing when to activate their pandemic plan (e.g., WHO levels) has caused major confusion after the last scare.
- Companies lack background data on how staff and communities may react to the pandemic based on lack of past history.
- Are we ready for our social structure to break down like it did in New Orleans?
- Companies may or may not know what is critical to their business as it has never been identified or updated.
- Levels of proactive communication to employees varies greatly across organizations.
- Belief that the data network can truly support the number of remote users for extended periods; many networks cannot support large groups of remote users for any period of time.
- Length of time remote users can really work from home and maintain critical operations
- Lack of ability to truly remote operate data centers and other critical facility based components
- A lack of a true assessment of critical suppliers and their pandemic capabilities
- Downsizing due to the economy will have a critical impact to the ability to recover in a number of organizations due to the lack of staff.
- Ability to transfer voice communications to home when employees must work remotely.
- Identifying criteria that can be used to issue social distancing controls, close offices, etc.
- Exercising of people, plans and processes varies greatly across organizations.
- Lack of documented HR policies to address extended absences; many do not want a documented policy in fear of lawsuits.
- Preparing staff for the pandemic varies greatly.
Michael Herrera
Michael Herrera is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MHA. In his role, Michael provides global leadership to the entire set of industry practices and horizontal capabilities within MHA. Under his leadership, MHA has become a leading provider of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services to organizations on a global level. He is also the founder of BCMMETRICS, a leading cloud based tool designed to assess business continuity compliance and residual risk. Michael is a well-known and sought after speaker on Business Continuity issues at local and national contingency planner chapter meetings and conferences. Prior to founding MHA, he was a Regional VP for Bank of America, where he was responsible for Business Continuity across the southwest region.
