One of my favorite Sunday morning endeavors is digging into what is deemed old media, the Sunday Paper. Now to me I don't see old media going away anytime soon due to the nostalgic nature of this routine. Now the industry as a whole will be forced/has been forced to change how it turns a profit but its not due to lack of subscribers in my opinion.

Case and point, head down your neighborhood street at 5:30am in the morning on a Sunday and how many little printed bundles of joy do you see? To me, its tangible, definitive, and very much a part of my past. I will, god willing, be a subscriber for life. With all that encompasses the NOW of our lives, ie. twitter, facebook, online media in general, people like the "touch" factor of paper. After all it is the most abundant sense, right?

Anyways, so the purpose of this post was not to highlight why I read the Sunday paper (although I have consumed half the post with my rantings) but rather highlight an article I saw that made me think. Note: No I didn't see this online, but back tracked to give reference to the article.

So the article is called, Who's Ready for the Flu? . What immediately grabbed my attention was this beginnning statement..

.... A survey of 1,000 companies nationwide found that more than two-thirds couldn't maintain normal operations if they lost a chunk of their work force for two weeks. Longer than that and the problems would be severe, according to the Harvard School of Public Health survey released last week.

Two-thirds folks, over 600 companies in this survey could not maintain normal operations after two weeks..absolutely shocking to me. Not due to natural disaster, not due to some act of terrorism, but influenza..a very common and yearly occurrence. Now naturally my question is what percentage of the companies have virtualized their datacenters, maybe not entirely but have started that trek toward the 100% virtualized DC. How would this sway the survey?

So what's the takeaway?

Determine your companies sick leave policy, if its too strict ask if the policy is loosened during a very real flu pandemic. Is sticking to policy more important than the continued health of the business?

What is your companies remote work policy?

We individuals in IT are very much mobile and can accomplish our jobs anyway, heck I do it everyday. Nine times out of ten its old school mentality that forces your feet onsite, political swineness if I must say. It’s obvious it’s in your companies best interest to keep those infected quarantined, you wont be passed over at raise time if you push the subject, trust me. This is good business, this is efficient business..

And finally do you have a contingency plan for a pandemic?

Prioritize..this should come first, in order of likeliness and probability. This could very much be the determining factor between a business that lives or a business that dies.

So how prepared are you?