For a multinational technology company, we were tasked with creating a pandemic preparedness course for their senior HR team – 3 years before the occurrence of the COVID pandemic. As the company operated in parts of the world with disparate healthcare provision, it was important to take into account each distinct context.
We had to analyse previous global outbreaks to develop an evolving clinical picture that was both credible and helpful to the company. The developing scenario had to allow the HR managers to decide what they would do at each stage of the pandemic: how they would protect their employees and the functioning of the company in different parts of the globe.
We created a scenario whereby a deadly respiratory virus emerged from a country in the far east. Basing the infectivity dynamics on the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’, we predicted the likely infectious rates and deaths in several areas of the world in which the technology company operated, and how the pandemic might evolve over time.
Over the 6 weeks of the exercise, we presented weekly scenarios to the company’s HR managers that enabled them in ‘real time’ to go through the process of deciding what they would do and at which points, supporting the company’s ability to operate to the best of its ability.
This was an important and valuable process to undertake, standing them in good stead for the real COVID pandemic that followed only a few years later.