Zurich Implements SARS Contingency Plan Zurich North America, a company with offices worldwide, including Hong Kong and Singapore, has developed a contingency plan to minimize chances of an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome among employees.
Zurich, which has 541 employees in Hong Kong and 700 in Malaysia and Singapore, has developed a company policy which has been in effect for about 10 days, said Wayne Fisher, chief risk officer with Zurich North America in Zurich, Switzerland.
"We have actually prohibited travel in those countries without an extraordinary level of sign-off," he said. "We also restricted them from coming to meetings here for the foreseeable future."
The travel ban affects at least 50 employees who travel to Hong Kong, he said.
Mr. Fisher said the company also has alerted its offices "to be vigilant and use common sense with regard to visitors" that come to the offices. With the 10-day latency period for SARS in mind, he said, a business contact visiting in Zurich could have been in Hong Kong just a few days before.
"If somebody [an employee] has traveled to those areas on a trip that could not be postponed, we're requiring that they work from home for 10 days," he added. "The language used, he said, is that 'we expect the person to continue their work activities from home.'"
Procedures are just being tested, "but we have talked to two people who recently returned and they both agreed it was a good idea," he said.
Herbert Cohrs, group security with Zurich, said employees have been concerned about exposure. "So it was important to us to come out with a clear and concise policy that was groupwide, so everybody knows exactly where it stands," he said. He noted concerns not only among people who may have been exposed traveling, but also those at work who are concerned about being exposed, adding that the policy has already gotten "a very favorable response."
"We see this as a broad workplace safety issue," Mr. Fisher added. "The fact that we are willing to have somebody work from home for two weeks and perhaps lose a little productivity is a very good tradeoff in terms of the employees feeling better. The tradeoff, we think, is a good one."
Employees in the Hong Kong office "have created a fairly substantial list of actions that they have taken," Mr. Cohrs said. He said the list includes issuing face masks to employees, having the office cleaned on a regular basis with antiseptic, frequently changing air filters, using the air conditioning system for longer periods to filter air, and bringing in more fresh air.
Mr. Cohrs said that "general good health" is also encouraged, such as "maintaining good personal hygiene, avoiding visits to crowded places, using a face mask in places such as crowded elevators, and avoiding meetings and gathering places where they might be exposed to someone who has the disease."
The office has developed a contingency plan where employees learn other jobs in the office by co-training and sharing job functions, Mr. Cohrs said
Mr. Fisher added that any employee who becomes pregnant in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore offices would work from home. "One can easily envision that you might survive it, but an embryo wouldn't," he said.
Contingency plans for a possible event such as SARS requires different thinking than for an event such as a power outage, fire or earthquake, Mr. Fisher said. "This has been a lesson in thinking about these issues in terms of placing employees," he said.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, April 14, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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