As absenteeism levels soar as a result of the swine flu outbreak, businesses are being urged to ensure that they have proper contingency plans in place.

The latest research from Absence Health Partners reveals that the likelihood companies will suffer from absences through ill-health has nearly doubled in the past three months, due to infections from swine flu and other colds and viruses,

While millions of individuals are worrying about their personal health, those who run businesses are now wondering how they will cope through the winter.

Will they be able to manage if lots of staff phone in sick?  Do they have the right people to cover key positions in the company?  Will they tell staff to work from home rather than come in?

While the impact of the virus has so far been mild in the majority of individual cases, swine flu could have a severe effect on businesses which are not adequately prepared if cases rise.

Phil Brown, Managing Director of Youmanage, said: "At times like this, having an effective management system in place can make a massive difference to a company's ability to respond effectively.

"You need to have a system which can give you information at your fingertips about who is off sick, who is not, and what transferable skills are possessed by those employees who are at work, so you can redeploy them efficiently if necessary.

"While thankfully most people seem to recover fully from swine flu, you could find your business left with glaring gaps if a lot of employees are off at the same time. Now is the time to plan ahead."

There are several key questions for bosses to ask themselves:

• Can workers actually be asked to work from home?   Is your current system fully web-based, enabling employees to have secure access to data and functionality?
• Do your line managers and senior executives have easy access to key information in the event of your Human Resources team being laid low?  Can they reach employee records, HR documentation and guidance?
• Does your system allow them to keep track of absences and holidays and quickly identify gaps in the organisation?
• Does it enable them to quickly and easily identify employees' skills so people can be transferred into business critical operations if a key employee is ill?
• Can front-line managers easily access guidance about how to manage staff, both the "worried well" and those off sick?
• Can employees update their own details and access company documentation from home, on a secure access?
• Is your system vulnerable in the event of key IT employees being off sick? Or is it a fully-managed, hosted service which is not vulnerable to internal network constraints?

Youmanage is a comprehensive online toolkit which gives people managers access to all of the processes, employee information and guidance they need in a single service - all at the click of a mouse.

All data is hosted in highly secure data-centres and constantly backed up, providing much higher levels of security and reliability than most SMEs can achieve in-house. As it is hosted on the web, it can be easily reached from anywhere a manager has access to the internet, making it ideal for working from home or mobile working.

As a fully-managed service, Youmanage is easy to implement and cost-effective to run. As well as giving managers instant access to key information, such as absence and sickness records, it supplies up-to-date advice and guidance on employment law. Advice can be tailored to incorporate a company's own policies and guidelines.