The View from Harvard Business

GAO: Swine Flu Could Disrupt Telecommuting

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Managing Uncertainty

Employers are counting on the ability of employees to work at home as the H1N1 virus, or Swine Flu, continues to spread. Problem is, the virus might severely slow Internet communications as well. That's the conclusion of the Government Accountability Office in a report issued earlier this week. The agency predicts a pandemic would cause a surge in Internet use, not only from telecommuters but from sick kids drawing bandwidth from local networks.

"Increased demand during a severe pandemic could exceed the capacities of Internet providers' access networks for residential users and interfere with teleworkers in the securities market and other sectors... Private Internet providers have limited ability to prioritize traffic or take other actions that could assist critical teleworkers."

According to the Washington Post, such a scenario would also hurt the government's ability to deal with the rapid spread of virus. Read the Post's account, Flu-wary telecommuters may clog Web networks, GAO says. If you are an employer, you should be taking this warning seriously. Are you prepared to keep the business running if your at-home employees have limited communications capabilities? Do you think the GAO is on to something here, or is this just more government overreaction? Take our poll.[poll id="16"]

posted by Sean Silverthorne
October 28, 2009 @ 6:24 am

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