A highly contagious flu bug hits your company of 100 employees and 50% can’t show up to work. Can your business still function for the day? What about a week or more? This would be classified as a Black Swan for Human Resources.
So what is a Black Swan? Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines a Black Swan as:
A) An outlier – something that is outside the realm of regular expectation / a rarity
B) Has extreme impact
C) Something that can be explained after the fact in retrospective
Have you given thought to what a Black Swan might be for your company? For most, they are mired in the day to day operations rather than evaluating the extreme ends of the spectrum. We don’t like to think about the worst case scenarios, because they rarely happen. But when they do, they can be devastating. Back-up plans and emergency scenarios typically deal with facilities and how they affect the company assets due to fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes.
Of equal importance are the human assets. With a small amount of planning, preparation, and prevention through wellness and the development of healthy habits, a company-wide epidemic can be averted. While we don’t like to think about these things, preparing for them allows us the ability to better deal with situations when they arise. Would you rather avoid the company wide contagion or can your company withstand the arrival of a Black Swan?