Fever, aching limbs, a cough and vomiting. These are some of the symptoms which characterise the current H1N1 swine flu virus. But there seems to be little difference from those associated with seasonal flu, so what is all the fuss about? Asks Karen Jones, Marketing Manager at GemaTech.

Simply put, we have yet to see exactly what this new virus can do. The severity of symptoms and speed with which swine flu could mutate during the coming winter months remains uncertain. But to learn from previous pandemics, what is certain is that as the seasons change from summer to autumn and the conditions become ripe for viral reproduction, the virus may rise up with a vengeance, being easily transmitted from person to person and disabling its victim for up to two weeks, possibly longer. According to Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer for England, he is working on three possible scenarios for this coming autumn/winter:

1. the virus remains largely unchanged and continues to offer only mild symptoms
2. the virus changes and becomes more severe (note that all flu viruses mutate which is why new vaccines are required year on year)
3. it combines with another virus subtype and a new strain appears

If either scenario 2 or 3 occurs then the severity of the pandemic will dramatically increase.

Viruses are non discriminatory and will affect every business, organisation, school, transport system and public gathering in the UK. As cases rise, the natural human response will be one of quarantine and containment through choice or necessity. People will choose to work where they feel safest. Schools will close. Offices may close. Even the retail sector which is highly dependent on a just-in-time supply chain structure is likely to be severely disrupted if infection reaches extreme proportions. What this means in reality is that businesses need to plan for management of staff absence and it should not be assumed that only the sick will stay away from the office. Consider, for example, the proportion of working parents who will be forced to look after their children at home as a result of school closures. Also public transport may be severely affected or even closed to prevent transmission through close personal contact, making it difficult for a substantial proportion of the working population to physically get into the office even if they chose to.

During the pandemic absenteeism will be the single most debilitating disruption to any organisation, particularly those which rely heavily on incoming calls from customers and suppliers. After all, a customer phoning your organisation is only as valuable as the availability of someone to answer their call.

The Health and Safety Executive as well as the Department of Health have issued advice to employers which include considering alternatives to direct meetings in order to reduce face-to-face interaction, including the use of telephone conferencing and home-working.

I would argue that organisations should not ‘consider’ alternatives to direct meetings but should in fact ‘implement’ alternatives. Planning and considerations are good, but now is the time to undertake actions, not good intentions.

Flexible working should no longer be an option or a privilege but an essential lifeline for organisations where jobs can be performed anywhere there is a phone and broadband connection, provided that the appropriate technology is supplied and the employees are fully prepared to use it.

According to leading authority on teleworking, Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of the US Telework Coalition, any telework plan must be established well in advance of an emergency. “This is an insurance policy that you’re buying, and you can’t wait to buy life insurance until somebody dies—you can’t wait to buy health insurance until you get sick,” he says. And with many companies serving an increasingly global client base, Wilsker says, the ones that have a consistent telework policy in place have a key advantage: if your office is closed due to snow or any other local issue, nearby customers might understand, but a customer across the world won’t. “It’s really a competitive situation—and those that have this capability are going to have a hell of a competitive advantage over those that don’t”.

However, flexible working for some companies has been seen as a risky step to take, sometimes viewed as too complicated to implement, or perhaps more frequently, there is a fear within management of losing control of their teams’ productivity. But today’s advanced flexible telecoms solutions enable seamless replication of office-based monitoring if required, even when a team is disparately located, for example, secure and instant access to voice recordings of all re-routed incoming calls in addition to computer key stroke monitoring of contact centre systems.

Additionally, the availability of a flexible working policy has many other valuable benefits. The International Stress Management Association (ISMA), which is a registered charity promoting sound knowledge in the prevention and reduction of human stress, has said that flexible working not only makes employees happier, it also increases their productivity. This is re-iterated by a survey conducted by Avaya suggesting that flexible workers saved 39 days a year avoiding their commute and around a fifth of them used that time to do more work. In a separate survey of nearly 800 Institute of Directors members found that 67% of executives cited productivity as their main reason for working from home. Survey results also suggest that the only downside to working from home could be the reduction in interaction with colleagues, however this is easily overcome by providing communication between the company and individuals through using instant messaging technology, SMS, email and fax, and a company intranet for information dissemination. And if the technology is made available, employees can have access to corporate networks, directory lists and conferencing facilities to keep team members in regular communication.

The bottom line is that an employee’s work life balance is greatly improved leading to extra productive working hours gained by employees and employers alike as time spent commuting is reduced, as well as eliminating distractions encountered at the office.

Enabling key ‘front-line’ customer service staff to be able to answer their incoming calls as if they were in their office environment will be key to combating call centre absenteeism. When customers call a company do they generally mind, or even need to know, where your employee is located? What is important to them is that their call is taken promptly and their requests are fulfilled by a competent employee. Without this level of service your organisation is at risk from negative brand perception and opens the door for your competitors to steal your customers.

Indeed it appears that one particular Wholseale ISP provider is incurring the wrath of its customers for having multiple telephone outages and a distinct lack of customer service. Disgruntled customers of the ISP posted the following comments on a broadband forum on the 24th May 2009, clearly showing the customer reaction to a lack of call answering with no explanation provided:

'They are definitely having phone issues. Been on hold half an hour!'

'I would have to agree. We currently have 3 phones in the office calling different contact numbers at xxx, and none have been answered in 42 minutes as I type, likewise none were answered all morning.'

'I'm close to driving over to xxx HQ at the moment.'

'We gave up this morning trying to call them'

'Could they probably be busy shifting all their call centre gear into a van in order to flog it at a Bank Holiday car boot sale tomorrow? Can't see they have much use for it.’

Figures suggest that a company’s brand is worth 85% of the value of the business and that protecting this asset is crucial.

Though the cause of the lack of service is unknown in the example above, this negative publicity could have been easily avoided had the ISP provider implemented the following strategy:

* Implemented an automatic recorded message which gave information regarding the lack of service to any incoming caller to apologise for the delay and to keep them informed
* Re-routed calls to available agents in locations where they would be available to take the calls.

Travel Councellors (an innovative agency which was cited as the fourth fastaest growing company in the UK and which won the Sunday Times/ Virgin Atlantic Award for Customer Service) on the other hand is a completely virtual contact centre, serving the UK holiday market with over 40 home-based agents, there is no central office and other than supplying a pc and headset, the overheads for the company are minimal. This is a truly pandemic resilient model and also reaps the benefits of breeding a culture of trust and mutual respect between employer and employees. Not every business will be capable of employing such a model on a permanent basis for all employees, but for periods of exceptional circumstance it can only be of benefit to the successful business continuity of any organisation. Travel councellors has been using GemaTech’s Remote Service Manager solution for 12 years allowing them to re-route calls to available agents within seconds, providing seamless service and an achievable target of zero abandonment on all calls.

The pandemic is here, spreading and will not die easily. Is your organisation ready to survive the possible absenteeism rates which could easily erode your business? GemaTech understand that your inbound telecoms are the lifeblood of your organisation. We can provide you with a solution which allows your organization to continue operating effectively in the face of a pandemic.

For more information on flexible call re-routing and secure voice recording contact Gematech on 0845 345 3333.