Patent Application
20080177614
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to estimating the occurrence and dynamics of workforce absenteeism resulting from pandemic events, human behavior and mitigating policies. More particularly, the present invention relates to using an epidemiological model of pandemic combined with a causal model of human behavior and mitigation actions to reduce the likelihood of employees being unavailable for work.
2. Background Description
There is a high likelihood that a pandemic will occur in the not-too-distant future and that it will impact various aspects of society—creating deaths, despair, fear, and monetary cost, among other losses. Firms would also be negatively affected by a pandemic through loss of revenue, profit, employees, and even through a reduction in the value of the business itself.
Employee absenteeism is a key factor that impacts firms as result of a pandemic, hampering various business operations, especially for service-intensive businesses. During and even after a pandemic, some employees would not be available for work because of various factors including, but not limited to, sickness arising from the affliction, death, perception of risk, the need to attend to family members and non-availability of infrastructure, among other factors. Such a situation would create workforce shortfalls hampering manufacturing, the delivery of goods, and the provision of services.
There has been prior art describing the epidemiological spread of pandemic with respect to time and geography using mathematical equations, e.g., a system of differential equations. There has also been prior art making use of models of how the epidemiological spread of pandemic may change human behavior (causing fear, perception of risk, flight, etc.) using causal relationship and dynamic modeling methods.
The prior art has not, however, made use of models of how countermeasures may have a mitigating effect, not only on the epidemiological infection of employees but also on the perception of employees as to the risk of epidemiological infection. Both the size of the infectious population and the perception of risk affect employee absenteeism.
To address the deficiencies of the prior art, the present invention models the effect of mitigation actions on employee absenteeism and provides visibility into how mitigation actions may offset the effect of the epidemiological spread of a pandemic.
The present invention uses an epidemiological model; for instance, SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious and Recovered) model, etc. of pandemic and various corporate mitigation actions, estimating absenteeism (and thus availability) of employees as combined effect of pandemic (increasing effect on absenteeism) and mitigation actions (decreasing effect on absenteeism). An epidemiological model produces information on population affected by pandemic (susceptible, exposed, infectious, recovered population etc.), which affect employee health, perception and fear, which in turn cause employee absenteeism.
Mitigation actions to reduce the effect of pandemic by reducing transmissibility, duration of infectivity and perception of risk may include, but are not limited to: distributing anti-viral drugs such as Tamiflu®; distributing face masks; instituting separation policies; closing sites; restricting travel; using ancillary workers; using improved hygiene; instituting employee monitoring programs; reducing absence payments; and providing vaccination. Deployment of multiple mitigation actions may have a compounding effect on reducing absenteeism by affecting two major factors; reduction of number of infectious employees and reduction of the perception of employees as to the risk of infection.
To prepare firms for the possibility of pandemic, and to position firms to be able to develop response plans, it is very important to enable firms to estimate the magnitude and dynamics of workforce absenteeism prior to an occurrence of pandemic. It is also important to enable firms to estimate the effectiveness of various mitigation actions in terms of how such actions may reduce the adverse effects of a pandemic on employee availability and productivity. The present invention can be used to assist business leaders in assessing the impact of pandemic on availability of corporate workforce. An objective of the present invention is thus to quantify the impact of a potential pandemic on corporate employee absenteeism, including the effect of mitigation actions that firms may implement.
In the present invention, absenteeism is estimated as a function of perceived risk and the number of infectious employees, as well as other factors, including, but not limited to, the number of employees missing work to attend to family needs, the availability of infrastructure, and so forth, as shown in Equation 1 in a form of algebraic equation as,
A
t
=f(Pt,It,Ft,St) (Equation 1)
where
where
I
t
=I
t
g·αi·Effmit (Equation 3)
where
The effectiveness of overall mitigation actions is computed as a compounded effect of individual mitigation action as shown below.
where
The present invention thus provides a method, a system, and a machine-readable medium with computer instructions for estimating workforce absenteeism comprising the steps of: using a computer to access an epidemiological model of pandemic; using a computer to determine a compounded effect of one or more mitigation actions; using a computer to estimate overall workforce absenteeism based on perceived risk of pandemic, expected number of infectious employees, expected number of employees attending family needs, and infrastructure availability; and using a computer to provide said estimate of overall workforce absenteeism as output to a peripheral device.
According to the present invention, the effect of one or more mitigation actions may be computed by multiplying effectiveness and availability of individual mitigation actions. In addition, the overall effectiveness of mitigation actions may be a factor in determining one or a plurality of (a) the expected perception of employees as to the risk of infection and (b) the expected number of infectious employees. Furthermore, workforce absenteeism may be estimated based on expected employee perception of the risk of pandemic, expected number of infectious employees, expected number of employees attending family needs, and expected infrastructure availability.
The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages will be better understood from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, in which:
Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to
Needs to attend infectious family member 132 are computed using the information on degree of pandemic spread and average family size in region of the analysis. The infrastructure availability is accessed from another model that describes the unavailability of infrastructure such as electricity, water, telecommunication etc, as a result of pandemic.
Overall workforce absenteeism 190 may then be determined based on: perceived risk of pandemic 131; expected number of infectious employees 132; expected number of employees attending family needs 133; and infrastructure availability 140. A resulting estimate of overall workforce absenteeism 190 may then be provided as output to a peripheral device. The workforce absenteeism is computed in four groups; number of employees available at work, number of employees available at home (telecommuting), number of employees survived but not available for work, and number of employees not survived.
A comparison of the outputs shown in
While the invention has been described in terms of its preferred embodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention can be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.
