The cost of the necessary equipment and communication services for telework is usually negligible.

4.4.4 Telecommuting and Teleworking Projects

Another area in which administrative programs seeking to reduce vehicle emissions (and traffic congestion) are operating with increasing frequency is telecommunications. Like mandatory trip reduction policies, these programs could be seen to belong to the area of travel demand management (TDM). These projects would include pilot programs designed to stimulate and encourage the use of teleworking, teleshopping, telebanking, teleconferencing, and so on. In all cases, telecommunications are supposed to serve as substitutes for travel.

Of these, telecommuting and teleworking have been the most popular and are considered the most promising. They can be considered substitutes for staggered work hours and arrangements. Some have argued that telecommuting could eliminate travel altogether (Lee and Meyburg [53]) or at least significantly alter travel behavior (Mokhtarian [54], Nilles [55], and Salomon [56]). However, there are other viewpoints, including some who argue that enhanced use of telecommunications will produce increased travel and use of motor vehicles (Salomon [56] and Plaut [57]). Telecommuting can take place either from home or from special telecenters that could be established in residential neighborhoods, reducing commuting and eliminating some traffic and vehicle emissions in central business locations.

Telecommuting pilot projects have been implemented and are now in operation in many places, including California, Washington state, the Netherlands, and Japan. Some air quality regulations, such as in mandatory trip regulation programs, grant “credit” for home-based and telecenter-based telecommuting. For example, Rule 2202 of the South Coast (California) Air Quality Management District (AQMD 1996) states that vehicle trip emission credits will be granted for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction programs, which may include telecommuting. The application of this and similar transport control measures are motivated by their conjecture that they produce nontrivial air quality benefits, but there has been virtually no empirical confirmation to date of such benefits.

Recently the first attempts at quantifying the impact of home-based and center-based telecommuting upon transportation use and on pollution emissions have begun (Henderson and Mokhtarian [58]). From a small sample of workers in the Puget Sound Telecommuting Demonstration Project, it appears that the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) was significantly reduced as a result of telecommuting (from 63.25 miles per person-day to 29.31 on telecommuting days). However, the number of personal vehicle trips did not change significantly. The drop in VMT translated into a 49 percent drop in emissions of oxides of nitrogen and a 53 percent drop in particulate matter emissions on telecommuting days compared with commuting days. Emissions from engine cold start (especially emissions of total organic gas and carbon monoxide), of course, are eliminated only in home telecommuting, not in center telecommuting. It should be emphasized that there are serious questions as to how much of the entire labor force can potentially utilize such telecommuting. If the percentage is negligible, so will be the impact on emissions and congestion. Debate over the pollution benefits of telecommunications use continues.

In addition to CAFE standards, direct assignments or allotments of trip quotas, and administering of telecommuting pilot projects, other administrative controls are commonly used by policy makers to control emissions of pollutants. Among these are:

Traffic management, especially in downtown urban areas.

Motor emissions standards and regulations. These are regulations requiring vehicle inspection and emissions standards, and are probably the most widely used abatement policy for nonvehicle emissions.

Land use policy.

Vehicle specifications, such as with respect to weight, size, power, and so on.

Targets for use of methanol and alternative fuels (Sperling, Setiawan, and Hungerford [6]).

Center-city parking policies.

As noted earlier, administrative methods contain severe practical disadvantages because they substitute bureaucratic command and control for market mechanisms. Pricing methods will be all the more preferable within the framework of complex multigoaled policy problems, such as vehicle emissions. Yet in spite of all the advantages of pricing methods, policy makers have traditionally preferred administrative command-and-control methods of abatement, even in multicentered policy settings. (See Baumol and Oates [9], Stavins [16], and Swaney [29] for further discussion.)

2.1 Overview: Effect on National Energy Intensity

IT equipment indirectly affects energy consumption in several ways. For example, IT-enabled process controls enhance production efficiency, whereas IT-enabled telework and telecommuting (T&T) changes building usage and personal transportation patterns. The demand for IT equipment results in additional energy consumption to manufacture IT equipment. Together, these and many other facets of IT affect the macroeconomic energy intensity of the national economy (energy consumed per dollar of gross domestic product (GDP). Because of the number of factors at work and the sheer complexity of economic systems, quantifying the indirect energy impact of IT is significantly more difficult than understanding the direct energy impact. Nonetheless, evidence strongly suggests that the magnitude of the indirect impacts is comparable to—and likely exceeds—the magnitude of the direct impact.

Some of the most compelling evidence for this claim comes from energy intensity data from the late 1990s, when the Internet was experiencing widespread commercialization. During this period, the energy intensity of the U.S. economy began decreasing at a sharper rate, approaching decline rates characteristic of the early and mid-1980s, a time of high energy prices (Fig. 2). Notably, the sharp decrease in energy intensity, which coincided with a significant increase in economic productivity, occurred despite historically low (in real terms) energy prices, leading many to ascribe much of the sharp decrease in energy intensity to IT. Because the steeper energy intensity decrease began only recently, it is premature to draw a solid conclusion. If IT-based innovations do accelerate the long-term decrease in energy intensity, the impact of IT equipment on national energy consumption could be significantly larger than the 1% of energy directly consumed by such equipment.

IT equipment affects national energy consumption in at least three general ways: (1) it causes structural changes to the economy, (2) it changes the mechanics of commerce and work (e-commerce), and (3) it consumes energy during manufacture.

What to train on

Planners should focus work teams on training to meet critical functions as specified in the BCP. That training can be general, such as a shift to telecommuting or training that requires highly specialized knowledge. For example, some settings require that specific steps must be taken sequentially for the proper shutdown of a system such as a nuclear plant. Sequential activities will require specific hands-on drills that train to the plan and enhance work team familiarity with essential tasks. Or, a business that relies heavily on computer-driven work like an investment firm or a tax accountant might need to train for how to initiate telecommuting, access computer systems remotely, and safeguard client information if they lose their workplace due to a flood or a power outage. A university headed into fall semester registration might want to surface and prepare materials to use for virtual registration during a pandemic or even how to use paper backups during an extended power outage. Training should thus invite people who must perform specific tasks related to a critical function into practicing so that they learn their tasks well and can step ably into performing them in a crisis.

In addition to practicing the plan, critical function work teams should also practice workarounds for specific tasks because disasters will disrupt what you want to do, when you want to do it, and how you want to do it. Thus, while training should certainly focus on the desired actions, training should also introduce a few surprises along the way to get people to think outside of the planning box. Astronauts, for example, train repeatedly on mission critical functions so that what they do in space becomes a familiar routine. But surprises do occur, which happened when an accident occurred on Apollo 13 as its crew headed to the moon. While the crew monitored the onboard situation and responded to recommendations from NASA, the crew's backup pilot on earth went directly into a simulator to surface workarounds including how to power up systems without compromising limited battery power. If the batteries failed, the crew would be lost. To their credit, the workarounds they created brought the crew safely home. The mission was lost, but the astronauts survived, and NASA continued to send crews into space for decades. Backups should always be invited to participate in the training because disasters may occur when people are away from the office, and someone else will need to step in.

Value exists also with inviting a range of participants to the training both as active trainees and observers. Differing roles and positions within the organization will require different knowledge, skills, and abilities (Kim, 2014). Supervisors, for example, need to know how employees are responding and to refine procedures as needed so they can manage a crisis well. Those same employees need to know that their supervisors know what needs to be done as well as how and why it is done in a particular way. Outside observers may also bring value, such as someone from a similar business who can observe neutrally or even the local emergency manager. Thus, training should involve people up and down the organizational hierarchy and from outside the enterprise, to have multiple eyes on how well the plan unfolds and what can be done to improve after the training ends.

Planning teams should establish a regular training and exercise cycle to ensure that work teams perform essential actions when a disaster occurs. In areas with repetitive and seasonally expected hazards, that training should occur before the expected onset of the hurricane, tornado, flood or influenza season. Training typically works best when it engages employees in not only the necessary training skills but as it applies to a potential and realistic scenario. Training should always be evaluated so that lessons learned can be integrated into regular plan revisions. Those revisions should occur at least annually to keep the plan as current as possible.

Thus, the goals of training are multi-fold. Not only does training help people practice procedures to accomplish assigned tasks, training also fosters understanding of how a specific critical function task supports the larger enterprise and enables business continuity. Training offers the opportunity to build more effective work teams through the necessary dialogue, coordination, and collaboration that will surface during a training event. Use training to build understanding of the plan and to bolster work teams into a disaster-ready team ready for any event. An important part of that includes creating training scenarios that realistic fit what might happen and challenge trainees to learn.

Telecommunications and Urban Space

Telecommunications have had profound effects on the organization of urban space. Although large cities typically have much better developed telecommunications infrastructures than do small ones, the technology has rapidly diffused through most national urban hierarchies. In the future, therefore, the competitive advantages based on telecommunications will diminish, forcing competition among localities to occur on the cost and quality of labor, taxes, and local regulations. Regions with an advantage in telecommunications generally succeed because they have attracted successful firms for other reasons.

One increasingly important effect of new information systems is ‘telework’ or ‘telecommuting’, in which workers substitute some or all of their working day at a remote location (almost always home) for time usually spent at the office. Telework is most appropriate for jobs involving mobile activities or routine information handling such as data entry or directory assistance. Proponents of telework claim that it enhances productivity and morale, reduces employee turnover and office space, and leads to reductions in traffic congestion, air pollution, energy use, and accidents. The extent to which telecommuting has become popular is unclear, but some estimates hold that roughly 5% of the US labor force engages in this activity at least once per week. Future growth of telecommuting will encourage more decentralization of economic activity in suburban areas.

However, the growth of teleworking may ironically increase the demand for urban transportation services rather than decrease it, as was widely expected. While telecommuters travel to their workplace less frequently than do most workers, many have longer ‘weekly’ commutes overall, leading to a rise in aggregate distances traveled. In addition, the time released from commuting may be utilized traveling for nonwork-related purposes. Thus, while telecommuters may have different reasons for traveling, the frequency or volume of trips may not change. Moreover, even if telecommuting did reduce some trips, the associated reductions in congestion could simply induce other travelers onto the roads. In short, whether or not an actual trade-off between telecommunications and commuting occurs (their substitutability rather than complementarity) is not clear.

Another potential impact of information systems on urban form concerns transportation informatics, including smart metering, electronic road pricing, automated toll payments and turnpikes, automated navigation and travel advisory, remote traffic monitoring and displays, and improved traffic management and control systems. Such systems are intended to minimize congestion and optimize traffic flow, especially during the critical rush hour peak travel times. The rapid growth of wireless technologies, particularly cellular phones (which constitute the majority of phones on the planet today), allows commuters stuck in traffic to use their time more productively. Such systems do not so much comprise new technologies as the enhancement of existing ones.

The widespread use of telecommunications has led to important changes in the nature of urban and regional planning. Desperate for investment capital and jobs, many localities vie for one another with ever-greater concessions to attract firms, forming an auction that resembles a zero–sum game. The effects of such a competition are hardly beneficial to those with the least purchasing power and political clout. Left to sell themselves to the highest corporate bidder, localities frequently find themselves in a ‘race to the bottom’ in which entrepreneurial governments promote growth – but do not regulate its aftermath – via tax breaks, subsidies, training programs, looser regulations, low-interest loans, infrastructure grants, and zoning exemptions. As a result, local planners have become increasingly less concerned with issues of social redistribution, compensation for negative externalities, provision of public services, and so forth, and more enthralled with questions of economic competitiveness, attracting investment capital, and the production of a favorable ‘business climate’.

7.4.3.4 Mobile phones

Mobile apps by means of cell phones and video-conferencing devices are utilized for movement tracing of people, alerting people from entering high containment COVID-19 hotspots, assists doctors to analyze patients through telemedicine/telehealth and uphold people with online shopping, e-learning, online meetings and telecommuting (He, Zhang and Li, 2021b). To overcome and make the citizens and healthcare workers more concerned regarding the COVID-19 disease spread, the Indian government has developed a network-powered application widely known as ArogyaSetu, which is meant to develop a connection between the significant medical care administrations and Indian population. Main objective of this application is to show the closest corona infected individual so that more precautions could be taken during travelling in the surroundings. Through these framework, medical services authorities can distinguish any remaining cellphone operators who were inside a specific distance of the contaminated individual for particular time. Medical services divisions can contact those possibly tainted individuals, instruct them regarding the infection and disease transmission and guide them to get tested for the infection and self-isolate depending on the situation (WHO, 2020).

Crafting scenarios

Now that you have completed a hazard identification and have a feel for the associated risks, you will also be able to identify impacts that might face your business. In writing a BCP, these hazards and risks can be used to generate scenarios that prompt planning team discussion, surface areas of concern, and generate creative problem-solving. Should you generate a scenario for every hazard? The answer within emergency management is generally “no” because many hazards create the same kinds of consequences: displacement, disruption, downtime, supply chain problems, telecommuting, alterations to shift work, communication issues, payroll – and more. Emergency managers generally use an “all-hazards” approach to write most plans so that they emerge with a plan that efficiently and sufficiently covers a range of possible events and outcomes.

For example, severe weather of all kinds may cause the same problems that occur in a terror attack: warning people, caring for the injured, accounting for employees at the site of an attack, and communicating about the key next steps everyone should take to respond and recover. Generally, then, crafting one plan to cover multiple scenarios will suffice for most businesses most of the time. Those in areas of specific risk – such as an area subject to earthquakes (see Brown et al., 2019) and related tsunamis that also serve as a host site for a nuclear plant – will require additional levels of planning. Care must be taken also for personnel who might be exposed to significant risks from an explosion to an attack or a tornado strike. With the 2020 pandemic, essential workers came to include not only health care and first responders but also postal workers, delivery people, grocery store workers, meat packing personnel, and custodians. Dozens of these essential workers died and, though pinning down the exact source of infection can be difficult, deaths could be linked workplaces for those in health care, policing, firefighting, and paramedics/EMTs. For an example of some scenarios and what to talk about, see Box 3.4. Clearly, human losses represent the worst possible outcome but they are not the only losses that businesses should consider, a topic this chapter turns to next.

Box 3.4

Holding discussions around a scenario

Based on your hazard identification and risk assessment, draft a paragraph to spark discussion within your business. It might look something like these:

Your hazard identification and risk assessment has resulted in determining that an area dam represents a considerable risk in case of extended rainfall. Should the dam fail, your business and those you rely on will likely have 3–5 ft of water inside the business for up to a week.

Your business relies on Internet connectivity with data storage for critical records with confidential data. Employees notice a slowness in their connectivity followed by a complete loss of connection and lack of access to critical records. A ransomware message arrives soon after, demanding $30,000 to release the computers back to the company.

Historically, ice storms have led to power failures across the region and make travel nearly impossible. Your business or agency needs to continue to function as it provides critical services to the region. Given an anticipated power loss of up to 1 week accompanied by transportation challenges to clients, patients, or customers, the ice storm represents a potentially crippling event.

In your deliberations as a planning team, talk about the following:

How will your business and employees pivot to adapt to a new normal – which might mean displacement or downtime that will affect productivity and revenue generation?

Where else could your employees work toward the critical functions that your business addresses?

Where is the backup site for people to work?

Does everyone have what they need to do their core work?

If you lose a portion of your workforce, what is the personnel backup plan?

Where have you backed up key records and resources so that you can continue to operate?

Who are the essential employees that need to work toward reopening the business and what are their tasks?

What is an alternate procedure to get employees to their worksites or to the clients, patients, or customers they need to serve?

Geospatial Technologies and Women's Lives

Finally, there is the issue of the impact of geospatial technologies on women's everyday lives. Broadly defined, they include not only GIS but also the Internet, location-based services such as cellphones, navigation tools, and other types of communication technologies. In particular, patterns of Internet (which is an immense source of geographic information) and technology use are gendered and the evidence suggests that the impact of geographic information accessed through these means is also gendered; although at this point little is known about how this unrestricted information is used. Furthermore, these technologies have radically transformed the everyday lives of people and the effect on women, in particular, needs further investigation. For example, these technologies change the way we work, as in the case of telecommuting and the way we look for jobs, which lead to new types of gendered employment. Also, shopping and other household chores – typically the work of women – are increasingly done using the Internet. In addition to these individual uses, the Internet has become an important means for establishing and maintaining social networks beyond local communities and extending across national boundaries. These networks continue to serve as important sources of information for women in many domains of life, including prenatal care. The communities also extend to the virtual ‘bridgespace’ that supports flows of people, capital, information, and goods between, for example, North America and South Asia by facilitating the identification of marriage partners as shown by Paul Adams and Rhina Ghose.

The Internet, geospatial technologies, and information technologies in general, however, have uneven and controversial impacts on women. The combined effects of class, gender, age, and race perpetuate the digital divide and large groups of low income, elderly, and women of color do not have access to such technologies and, therefore, are increasingly marginalized in terms of employment, consumption options, health outcomes, and political empowerment. The Internet also plays a crucial role in the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and children and enables global flows of women's bodies from Third World countries and Eastern Europe to Western Europe and North America.

Another issue generated by geospatial technologies is that of privacy and surveillance in many domains including the relationship between the state and its citizens, corporations and their employees, producers and consumers, and individuals in their own private lives. The research suggests that these impacts are also gendered as they follow already established patriarchal patterns. For example, women are more likely to be targeted by advertisers owing to their greater role in consumption for their households or have their movements monitored by tracking devices installed by their partners.

INTRODUCTION

The need for telecommunication facilities in rural areas of developing countries has been justified in many studies. Development of telecommunication systems acts as a catalyst for economic development, an effect that is more pronounced in rural areas of poor countries than urban areas. Telecommunication facilities act as a linkage in international trade through development of exports from rural areas, besides the export from industrial zones, and conceptually enable equal distribution of national income. These facilities bring together people in rural and those in urban areas—for example, sharing information through the telephone. This is one of the factors that reduce the need for people to migrate to urban centers. Telecommunication facilities have been used in medicine and distant education through telemedicine and tele-education. Some studies indicate that telephone facilities evidently reduce business enterprise costs in the following areas: business expansion, managerial and labor time, inventory level, production stoppage, vehicle fleet scheduling, purchasing, selling, and supply. Transport needs and energy consumption are reduced through technologies like teleconferencing and telecommuting (Yusuf 1991; Hudson 1989; Bulter 1983).

These studies clearly demonstrate that telecommunication development plays a major role in the economic and social development of rural areas. However, provision of telecommunication facilities in rural areas of developing countries is still controversial. Many have argued that the benefits accrued in rural areas do not economically justify the cost of installing and maintaining telecommunication facilities due to long distance and small population density. Investment in telecommunication is considered to benefit only the affluent urban segment of society and hence is less important among public utilities. There is an apparently low demand for telephone services. Although the need for telephone services is high, this is not translated into demand because many people in rural areas are poor with low or no income. The development of telecommunication services has also been retarded because of some criminal acts in other rural areas as telephone lines run through vast areas unguarded. These unguarded lines are vulnerable to the acts of vandalism—for example, telephone poles are cut down (Ng'-eny 1989).

It is a technical challenge to provide efficient and reliable telecommunication facilities to rural areas cost effectively. Tremendous efforts have been made to develop telecommunication facilities to be deployed in rural areas. These efforts have been concentrated on the use of satellite technology (FWTF 1983). This technology requires the use of space satellites. Poor developing countries do not have the technical and financial capacity to launch and manage these satellites. They have to buy access time from organizations operating from industrialized countries, using foreign reserves. This may prove difficult for such countries whose foreign reserves are meager. Technologies must be explored that comply with the requirements of rural areas using mostly the available resources. This paper describes such technologies that can be adopted and adapted to appropriately provide telecommunication services to rural areas of developing countries.

More Information and Knowledge, Less Energy and Materials

The powerful informatics technologies are also instrumental in taking efficiency and efficacy to a higher integrated level, as for example in visualizing more ecologically benign and socially responsive designs, simulations and scenarios of city mobility access systems. Rather than defaulting to car-centric urban layouts, where vehicles consume more than half of a city's land area for streets, parking and garages, instead mobility access is being viewed as a combination of pedestrian and bicycle friendly pathways, integrated with more flexible transit systems, including telework and telecommuting.

The emergence of autonomous, driverless vehicles, increasingly used in a sharing economy model (NLC, 2015) for satisfying people's on-demand needs, could result in the need for far fewer vehicles, garages, parking areas, and road surface, freeing up a substantial amount of the city land and infrastructure now accommodating vehicles (Corwin et al., 2016). According to a review of many urban areas, the built infrastructure typically is < 20%, and open space and parks often < 5%, suggesting very positive regeneration opportunities (Guala, 2016) (Fig. 13).

Behind all of these extraordinary, rapidly evolving innovations are the near-magic breakthroughs spanning computational sciences, combinatorial algorithms, software engineering, machine learning, big data lakes, neural networks, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Deep learning supercomputer systems already perform powerful computational tasks, such as IBM's Watson, Google's DeepMind, Microsoft's Oxford, Facebook's FBLearner Flow, Baidu's Minwa, as well as those being developed by DARPANET for military use (and by their counterparts in China, Russia and other nations). The commercial and military applications of these exponentially evolving general-purpose technologies (GPTs) promise hyperbolic economic growth, as well as amplify destabilizing feedback effects throughout the political economy and socio-ecological landscape (Garreau, 2006).

Nevertheless, the multilevel “rebound” paradox strongly suggests that the intrinsic nature of capitalism to seek ceaseless growth, regardless of whether it occurs in communist, socialist or capitalist economies, creates the ever-present quandary of when enough is enough (Dietz and O’Neill, 2013) (Bogle, 2009). There is relatively miniscule recognition, for example, of limits to growth or planetary boundaries, nor social justice issues, extreme inequality and concentrated wealth/power, under the capital-expanding economic models (Foster et al., 2010; Kenis and Lievens, 2015).

In this regard, most orthodox economists claim to do objective and fact-based positive economics, and distrust the normative economics that heterodox economists argue is critical for addressing moral and ethical values. Yet, as articulated over the centuries by Aristotle, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mills, Karl Marx and many others, values and ethical questions are inescapable parts of economics. Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen has argued, “[T]he nature of modern economics has been substantially impoverished by the distance that has grown between economics and ethics” (Sen, 1987).

Such moral and ethical questions loom large both for confronting the global challenge of planetary boundaries and social justice, and in recognizing the disruptive impacts GAIN technologies will create, given they are projected to grow exponentially in the 21st century, wildly exceeding last century's smokestack industrial growth. Each of these tech-knowledge domains are experiencing phenomenal rates of innovation, with increasing realization that synergisms among and between the four technologies will accelerate even more innovation more rapidly.

Coping with employee impacts

Because revenue disruptions undermine a business's ability to pay employees, an owner may need to decide quickly who they can pay and to sort through various options. Those options can be pre-determined by the loss estimation (see Chapter 3) that revealed when disaster effects and costs outpace revenue streams. During planning team discussions over loss estimations, decisions can be made about the breaking point where businesses balance revenue versus expenses. That discussion will influence options for employers and their employees which may need to include:

Reduced working hours. In this option, employers cut back on the hours that employees work to conserve revenue but still enable employees to earn some income and the business to meet critical functions. Alternatives to lost payroll can be launched simultaneously. In the recent pandemic, employees in the bar and restaurant industry launched fundraisers for colleagues who were negatively impacted or collected tips for use by affected employees. Reduced working hours can also be offered across the workforce, as some employees with children or caregiving responsibilities or those nearing retirement may prefer an hourly reduction to manage their personal and professional lives.

Move to essential employees only. Some businesses may need to reduce staffing to only essential employees needed to operate the physical plant or conduct specific critical functions. Employers may or may not opt to pay those not deemed essential workers. For those designated as essential workers, employers should consider hazard pay and always provide personal protective equipment and disaster-relevant health and safety measures. In some situations, governments may designate which businesses are deemed essential which may also influence whether a business can remain open.

Offer transfers to new or alternate locations. Larger chains and corporations may be able to move employees out of devastated sites and to other locations from which they can work or offer telecommuting where feasible. Similarly, employees from outside the affected area maybe able to bolster locally impacted workforces when the number of available employees becomes reduced.

Create a donated leave pool. Donated leave could be used to keep people on a payroll. In the U.S., IRS Notice 2005-68 allows for employees to offer their available leave for a pool that employees can use in a disaster. Such an option may be helpful for those dealing with their own personal household recovery or in situations where employees must be taken off a payroll.

Furloughs. Employers may need to furlough employees which means that they have a job they can return to but will not be paid during the furlough. Typically, employees retain their benefits such as health care. Furloughs exist for a specified time and may unfurl slowly across the entire employee pool to spread out individual impacts.

Hiring freeze. Many businesses put hiring and purchase freezes into place when a disaster happens to conserve available funds. Such an action should be taken as soon as possible after a disaster to maintain business viability.

Reductions in force (RIF). Employers may choose to downsize the number of employed workers when the business experiences significant financial losses. RIF processes mean that those who fall into the reduced category are unlikely to return to their job. Some employers may offer incentives to make the process less painful such as Early Retirement Incentive Programs (ERIP) that provide a financial payout or extended benefits to those who want to leave the workforce voluntarily.

Reorganizing. A business may opt to reorganize their structure to streamline operations by combining positions or centralizing functions. That reorganization could result in layoffs or reductions in force. In some instances, businesses may choose to re-hire employees into the newly created positions.

Layoffs. When industries face the reality that revenue now outstrips expenses, layoffs may be necessary. Layoffs may or may not hold the possibility of a return after a specified time. Employers will likely find that when they try to bring employees back, they will face a loss of talented employees who have sought other positions to support their families.

Declare financial exigency or bankruptcy. In many locations, businesses can choose to declare bankruptcy as a way of protecting their assets, although such an option is not without subsequent challenges. Another step is to declare financial exigency which may afford opportunities to reduce staff that would normally not be released. Financial exigency is used in higher education which allows a university to release tenured faculty. Such a measure is considered drastic as tenure represents an earned, lifetime guarantee of employment.

Support programs. In many locations, particularly developing nations, it may be possible to pursue micro-loan programs or offer cash for work/food for work. (Srivastava & Shaw, 2015). The goal of a micro-loan program is to give out a small amount of money so that a business can secure resources to produce useful goods. After one of Turkey's earthquakes, local women producing dolls at a relief camp secured a small grant from the ministry's tourism division. They converted the grant into a successful doll production factory providing pay checks for displaced workers (Yonder, Akcar, & Gopalan, 2005). A similar micro-loan program after hurricane Katrina in the U.S. supported small, minority owned businesses often located in people's homes (Phillips, 2015).