Several years ago after the SARS epidemic in China and amidst the hype over the potential for Avian flu reaching our shores, I wrote out a case-style scenario that assumed we were hit with Avian flu and that travel was curtailed indefinitely.

I presented the scenario to a group of 30 staffing leaders (at a meeting hosted coincidentally by Disney) and asked them to develop a contingency plan for recruiting and onboarding new employees w/o travel by recruiters, hiring managers or job seekers. I gave them an hour to deliver a map of the "new" hiring process starting with a sourcer handing over prospective interested candidates.

Initially the task seemed simple. after all, in our post internet world we have enormous choices in how we communicate and collaborate.

After a few minutes though the problem started to get a bit difficult as the strategies being bantied about came in conflict with tactical preferences, hiring manager traditions, available resources, technologies that wouldn't integrate as well as vendors that wouldn't integrate them.

The teams met their goal but the check list of potential problems in deployment was quite extensive. All agreed a lot of pre-planning would be necessary to carry it off without a hitch. Of the firms in the room (and all had enormous resources at their disposal) none had experience recruiting large numbers of hires in a restricted travel environment and none were confident they could move deliver to the standards that the scenario presented.

Try it yourself. Despite the hype over swineflu, the most recent Workplace Readings published by SHRM quoted a CNN article that reminded me of the scenario.

"Companies are taking steps to combat the spread of swine flu by limiting travel...Microsoft, General Electric, IBM, and Dell already have contingency plans in place..."

The need for contingency planning - for bad times for good times and for the next times are as critical for staffing leaders to engage in as any other function in the firm.