THE SKY IS falling and business is calling.

This has nothing to do with Chicken Little. But it could have everything to do with our fine feathered friends as they incubate the bird flu. Scientists are watching the situation very closely. Fortunately, bird flu is still not yet a serious risk to humans, but the word is that this virus could take a swan dive from birds to humans — and if that happens, the result is a pandemic.

A pandemic would mean millions dead, widespread fear, sickness we’ve never seen before and economic downturn.

We need to have faith that our health-care professionals and researchers would work to find a solution if a pandemic occurred, but what would we do as business people to secure our place in a post-pandemic economy?

Simply put, it’s time to invest energy and resources into conducting the risk planning that you hope you’ll never have to use. Here are a few things to consider when planning for sustaining your company in a pandemic:

Family First: At the core of any business are employees, and for every employee there is a family that will come first in a crisis. As an employer, you need to create a plan that will enable your people to take care of theirs. Commuting will be hampered. Kids will be home from school. Relatives will get sick. You’ll need a plan to deal with that, like helping your employees to work from home.

Clean Office: One thing you can do to keep your business running during this crisis, which could last months, is to plan for a clean office, a section of your company that would be in quarantine. You may consider staffing it with single people or bringing in families to live at the office. The key here is to keep this group away from everyone else.

Provisions: Whether you are considering a clean office or preparing your home office, you will need enough food, water and other provisions to weather the storm. Our distribution channels are now maxed. We learned this the hard way when hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. Cold-storage transport trucks were rerouted to help in the cleanup, only to create delivery delays in the north.

Telecommuting: A lot of us will want to have our staff not at the office but still working because there will be an end to the pandemic, and your business will have to hit the ground running. Create strategies to get together over the Internet and over the phone. Larger companies may look at direct satellite hookups, as phone and Internet will be maxed while many people work from home.

Cash Is King: Do as your grandparents did and stuff some cold hard cash into your mattress. People who lived in downtown NYC during the 9-11 attack will testify to this. The pandemic will create slowdowns and sometimes stoppages, possibly due to outages, on everything including debit and credit transactions. So you should have some cash on hand.

Logistics: Distribution methods for products or services will need to change, as there will be fewer planes in the air and trucks on the highways. Also expect more time delays on items you may require for manufacturing or other business activities, as logistics will lag.

Employee Loss: The death toll from a pandemic would be unimaginable. You need to look at your current corporate structure and create some succession plan strategies. Many businesses today are compromised by lack of succession, and a pandemic would really put them at risk if they have not taken the time to prepare new employees for these positions.

Travel: Get proactive and safeguard your employees both at home and away. Have your people look at travel schedules and reconsider how and where they are travelling in the next little while. Find alternative ways of doing business in those locations, such as local brokers, manufacturer agents and telecommuting.

Resource Alternatives: Plan how you would secure the energy requirements to do business, such as generators or solar energy. Ensure that you have enough resources, but remember that you would probably be running at a decreased capacity.

Finally, will there be a pandemic because of the bird flu? Nobody knows, but the experts are saying that there will be, if not now, sometime in the future. And as my grandmother always said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

By TYLER HAYDEN