Bird Flu Preparedness eCourse Certification Program Opens To Public
Bird Flu Manual Online ( http://www.birdflu-manual.com ), the world’s foremost online reference and resource mine designed to help businesses prepare for a pandemic outbreak of Bird Flu, has recently made freely available to the public their Pandemic Preparedness eCourse Certification Program.
The ‘eCourse’, an email based tutorial program, was originally introduced as a paid for service to further assist business managers with preparing their businesses for an influenza pandemic.
In order to make the eCourse more accessible to all, Bird Flu Manual has recently suspended the enrollment fees and opened it to anyone with responsibility for the operational continuity or pandemic preparedness of their respective businesses. This includes, but is not limited to business owners, general managers, human resources managers, departmental managers and existing crisis managers.
The eCourse takes the form of a series of emails (16 in all) sent every few days, in a logical progressive order, each covering a different preparedness topic. They provide recipients with a step-by-step "staircase approach" to getting their business to a state of readiness for the coming influenza pandemic.
Each email explains its topic in great detail using instructions, images, tools and templates, and gives an assignment for the recipient to do at the end of each one.
The idea is that by the end of the eCourse, provided recipients have completed the tasks and assignments given to them in each email, they will have at least the basics covered in their pandemic readiness plans.
The eCourse has proven itself to be extremely popular, with thousands of business managers having enrolled themselves and completed their preparedness plans already.
At the end of the eCourse, after the last ‘lesson’, recipients are eligible for a 'Certificate of Completion' which can be shown to customers, clients, staff and shareholders to prove a company’s commitment to its operational continuity.
Furthermore, in order to assist with the assignments, Bird Flu Manual gives recipients, without charge, many of the tools and templates ‘normal’ visitors buy from them either directly, or from the Bird Flu Manual Online website, plus free access to its online contents.
The complimentary ‘tools’ include their Risk Assessment Templates, Pandemic Status Table Template, Flu vs Cold Differences Factsheet and Hand Hygiene Awareness Poster Templates, plus much much more.
In addition to the first two emails covering the ‘eCourse Introduction’ and ‘eCourse Outline’, here's a summary of the actual eCourse lesson topics covered ...
Lesson 1 - The Risk Assessment
In the first lesson, they explain in the simplest terms possible, what risk assessments are about, how to do one, and they show recipients how to put together a simple risk assessment template of their own. This will help recipients to identify their business's strengths and weaknesses in the four principal areas on which all businesses are reliant namely, people, processes, suppliers and the utilities they use.
Lesson 2 - Pandemic Response Phases
In the next lesson, sent a few days after the first, recipients see how and why they should align their own company's pandemic response phases to their country's and the World Health Organization's pandemic response alert phases. They learn about the Pandemic Response Status Table and how to put one together for their business.
Lesson 3 - The Influenza Manager
Next they take a look at who this individual (or individuals) is, what it is this individual will need to do before and during the pandemic, and what type of character would be best suited to the job.
Lesson 4 - Office Access Control
This lesson covers the increasing office access control arrangements managers will need to impose with the increasing threat alert levels. Keeping infected visitors, delivery personnel and even staff from unwittingly bringing the virus into the office and contaminating the workplace will play an important role in a manager’s goal of making work the safest place for staff to be outside of the home.
Lesson 5 - Social Distancing
In Lesson 5 they cover what Social Distancing is (the definition according to the World Health Organization) and what kind of Social Distancing Policies recipients can implement to help minimize the chance of staff exposing themselves to the virus un-necessarily.
Lesson 6 - Sickness Response Procedures
Having an efficient and quick response to dealing with sickness in the workplace will mean the difference between resuming operations promptly, and having to lock up an office for days. This lesson looks at formulating the actual sickness at work response procedures a business will be using, which can be officially documented and lodged.
Lesson 7 - Staff Awareness
People need constant reminders. In this lesson they cover the methods managers can use to increase pandemic preparedness awareness amongst staff, getting them to start taking it more seriously and have them play a more an active role in the company preparedness activities.
Lesson 8 - Supply Shortages
Next they go through why there will be shortages of certain products and which types of supplies critical to recipients’ business operations are at greater risk of being effected by disruption than others.
Lesson 9 - Pandemic Stockpiling
Special office provisions and equipment that are required during the pandemic such as face masks, hand antiseptics etc. will be in even more short supply than regular office products. Without them it will be difficult, if not impossible to get staff to come to work. In this lesson they look at how to estimate how many, and of what types of equipment managers will need to buy ahead of time, to last them through the initial pandemic ‘wave’.
Lesson 10 - Minimizing False Alarms
When the pandemic hits, managers will have panicked staff who think they have caught it when they suffer just about any ailment, such as the common cold or a headache. These sorts of false alarms could raise absenteeism rates considerably. In this lesson they introduce recipients to two great tools they can use to help alleviate that kind of anxiety and reduce the chances of false alarms from employees.
Lesson 11 - Staff Training
Once recipients have put together their pandemic preparedness and response plans they will need to communicate them properly to employees. Staff will appreciate the efforts managers are going to on their behalf and their education and understanding will reduce their panic considerably when the time comes. In Lesson 11 they also touch on getting 'buy in' from the other managers in the company.
Lesson 12 - Lists and Forms
As in any emergency managers should have at the ready, all the lists and forms they'll need. The last thing managers will want to be doing when the time comes is creating multiple copies of multiple forms. In this lesson they run through what kind of lists and forms are needed to complete the pandemic preparedness arrangements, and show recipients how to create them.
Lesson 13 - Report of Recommendations
Finally, once recipients have completed their pandemic preparedness assessment they will need main board approval, budget and other resources in order to take the company through to a point of readiness. Even if approval is not needed, managers will need to consolidate their plans into one simple to follow working document.
Final email – The eCourse Certificate
Once recipients have completed the eCourse they get a ‘Pandemic Preparedness Certificate of Completion’ with their name on it. This certificate can be shown to clients, customers, shareholders and staff to give confidence to them that when the pandemic comes, the company will have the best chance of all to be able to continue its business operations.
To enroll yourself in the Bird Flu Manual Online Pandemic Preparedness eCourse Program, simply go to their website Bird Flu Manual Online ( http://www.birdflu-manual.com ) and give your first name and email address at one of the subscriber sign up forms. They will take it from there.
Move ahead quickly with your sign up though, as there’s no telling when they will be going back to charging for it again.
Nigel Thomas is a veteran business continuity planner. For free references, resources and to join their free eCourse program, go to Bird Flu Manual Online ( http://www.birdflu-manual.com ) or, if you need more comprehensive tutorials, tools and templates, consider Bird Flu D-I-Y eManual for your pandemic preparedness ( http://www.birdflu-manual.com/pandemic-preparedness.htm ).
