The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases is growing exponentially and the WHO has declared a pandemic. European, national and regional authorities have thus been forced to adopt financial, capital injection, along with health, employment and mobility measures to manage the coronavirus’s impact on society.
As regards the business sphere, the consequences of this health crisis are beginning to be seen with the cancellations of flights and hotels, of trade fairs and conferences, interruptions in supply chains, shortages at points of sale and a steady downturn in demand. Therefore, preventing risks properly and efficiently will determine how successfully our business survives in this pandemic.
These are some of the essential points that must underpin our process to identify, analyse and manage the coronavirus risks in our companies.
THE PANDEMIC AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANS
- Recovering and restoring the levels of operations interrupted by the pandemic is the main objective of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). An appropriate design of those plans will seek to ensure that the coronavirus affect us as little as possible and that business activity does not stop.
- Once the scope of the plan has been defined and the risks analysed regarding the temporary downturn, the continuity or recovery strategy must be designed and different contingency plans or procedures implemented that guarantee the return to normality once the pandemic has occurred.
The preventive measures that we can include in our coronavirus contingency plans are:
Limiting the people potentially exposed to infection:
– Restricting visits, cancelling trips and encouraging remote working.
– Providing information on basic hygiene measures, such as how frequently to wash one’s hands
– Distributing disinfectant products at the work establishments.
– And ensuring there are gloves and masks in the company’s first-aid kits.
If anyone relating to the business is found to be infected, reactive measures should be taken, including:
– Reporting to the activities.
– Temporarily shutting down the activity. Activating remote-working measures to minimise the risk of the virus spreading.
THESE OTHER ASPECTS ALSO NEED TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT:
• Designing a technological consultancy project that analyses the cyber risks and externalising those risks in a cyber-risk policy that will help to protect our business assets against possible attacks. For more information consult MatErh, our partner in Risk Management and Insurance.
• Correctly approaching the processing of health data relating to the coronavirus, which will not require the consent to the data subjects. For more information consult MatErh, our partner in Risk Management and Insurance.
• Paying special attention to ensure that the contingency measures adopted to manage this pandemic comply with current legislation and with any other that the authorities adopt to deal with this crisis. For more information consult MatErh, our partner in Risk Management and Insurance.
