How to use ISO standards to address a pandemic

There is no doubt that each pandemic causes damage to businesses worldwide – not only is there the problem of a decrease (or, in some cases, a sharp increase) in demand for products or services, but there is also the problem of how to organize a company to deliver their products and services in a very different way.

Challenges with pandemics in a modern business world

So, what is a pandemic? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a pandemic is “an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population.” From the business operations point of view, for most companies this means (1) your customers or employees cannot reach you, or (2) your customers or employees can reach you but are afraid for their own health.

To address the first problem, companies start reacting in the following ways: they overcome the lack of physical contact with customers and employees by using electronic means of communication; they ask their employees to use alternative places to work, mostly from their homes or other remote locations; and they use alternative channels for delivery of their products through outsourced logistics services. However, by making these changes, companies face several challenges: by drastically changing the way their business operates, the continuity of their operations is endangered. By accessing data from employees’ private devices and their homes, and by processing data through various cloud service providers and logistics partners, the security of information is also endangered. Finally, this new way of doing business requires different types of skills from both employees and partners in the supply chain, so the quality of delivering products and services is endangered.

To address the second problem – health & safety – companies are starting to require protective equipment for (Read more...)