Critical questions your organisation needs to consider when planning for pandemic preparedness are:

• Have you considered the features of a pandemic disease and why it is different to a conventional business continuity risk?
• Have you considered the impact of an outbreak on your organisation and how you might recover — many existing business recovery plans are not well suited to situations where a proportion of the workforce is lost or there is a major disruption of the national and/or global environment.
• Have you reviewed existing risk management and BCM plans and amended them based on an interpretation of the renewed threat?
• Do you have an Emergency Response Team?
• Do you have a Business Recovery Team that can cope with the specific problems thrown up by an outbreak?