Sometimes being a manager involves more than just keeping a budget and making sure your goals are met. Occasionally, IT managers have to plan for those times when the outside world comes barging in. This is the case right now with the threat of swine flu, which has been growing for about a week.

If you don't have an emergency plan for your IT staff and for your company, you are way behind. And you better start hustling because if there is a pandemic, your workers won't be in the office and may need to telecommute to keep your company humming. "The big idea is if your people can't be at the workplace, how would your business continue?" said Jim Dinegar, the president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, in a recent Washington Post article.

For now, the easiest solution may be handing out bottles of sanitizing cleanser so employees can keep germs at bay. But in the longterm, telecommuting may be your only answer if there is a real emergency. "As we communicate with our staff, we need to not lose sight that we should all be taking this seriously but not panicking," Ray Thomas, the Booz Allen executive heading up the company's pandemic response efforts, told the Post. "We need to strike a balance."

Have you, or are you talking to your staff? Are you preparing for a surge of demands for secure online access? If you haven't, there's no need to read the tea leaves--the time is now.

For more on pandemic preparations:
- check out this Washington Post article

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