Flu simulation puts spotlight on homeworking

City firms are re-examining their business continuity and homeworking plans in the aftermath of a giant exercise to simulate the impact of a pandemic flu outbreak.

Around 3,500 workers in 70 different City organisations took part in the six-week exercise held by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the Bank of England and the Treasury which ran in October and November last year, simulating 22 weeks of a flu outbreak.

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Such a pandemic is currently considered by government to be one of the leading risks to the UK.

A report about the exercise published by the FSA said that many of the companies that took part are now making adjustments to their business continuity plans in areas such as human resources, outsourced services, suppliers and communications.

The exercise simulated levels of staff sickness rising from 15 per cent at the start of the exercise to a peak of 49 per cent at the height of the pandemic - with clusters of absence taking the peak rate up to 60 per cent in some business units.

Companies' homeworking strategies were also tested and "many issues" surfaced, including how to ensure effective compliance and control over remote activity, IT security considerations and how to maintain tech support, the report found.

It said the exercise also raised the question of whether the telecoms infrastructure would be able to support large-scale homeworking for a prolonged period when staff shortages in the telecoms sector progressively eroded maintenance capability.

Investment banks responded to the (simulated) growing shortages of front, middle and back office staff by reducing trading volumes but throughout the scenario "virtually all" trading was conducted on-site as businesses were not sure they would be able to maintain levels of compliance and control to allow trading from home on a prolonged basis.

But the report said that while financial infrastructure providers produced regular updates on their operational status to the market throughout the exercise, due to the high level of automation of their processes, it appears that only very high levels of absenteeism would threaten their critical functions.