When we talk about business continuity today, the first thing that often comes to mind is a major disaster or high profile crisis. There seems to be terrible events every time we turn on the news. While these events are often dramatic, few impact business continuity in a significant way. Security and business continuity managers are monitoring events and their risk to personnel on a real-time basis, but often health threats are not on their radar when it comes to their risk to business operations.
In fact, it’s more likely that an infectious disease outbreak could significantly disrupt your workplace than the risk of terrorist attacks, earthquakes and bombings all put together. Over 50 percent of companies have had an infectious disease case in the workplace – so while these events are rarely in the news, they impact operations every day around the world.