What plan does your school have to deal with faculty getting ill?

[the_geneticist]

I was asked at a meeting today what the "backup plan" is if our lab TAs get sick.  Well, if it's just one or two, then I'll have other TAs cover for them.

"But what if 10 of the 15 TAs all get sick at once?"
dream response: then the world has gone to absolute sh!t and teaching labs are the last thing we need to worry about.
actual response: I will contact the department chair and ask for advice on how to proceed

[Stockmann]

The average age of tenured folk in my department is in the 60's. But my employer doesn't yet have a clear plan for moving the upcoming term online, so of course there's no plan to deal with multiple faculty becoming seriously ill.

[Caracal]

I was asked at a meeting today what the "backup plan" is if our lab TAs get sick.  Well, if it's just one or two, then I'll have other TAs cover for them.

"But what if 10 of the 15 TAs all get sick at once?"
dream response: then the world has gone to absolute sh!t and teaching labs are the last thing we need to worry about.
actual response: I will contact the department chair and ask for advice on how to proceed

Yeah, exactly,  obviously it is important under normal circumstances that classes continue and students get grades on time, but we aren't keeping the power working. You only need a contingency plan for extreme circumstances if the work stopping is a totally unacceptable option. What would a contingency plan look like anyway? We'll ask the military to send us some more lab TAs? Would volunteers arrive from out of state?

[Terrapinfan]

Our school has asked but not mandated that faculty move their basic documents like syllabi to the LMS. We are used to dealing with faculty replacements in case of routine illness/events, so I think the thought is just to deal with it on an as-needed basis.

[polly_mer]

IHE article: https://insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/06/colleges-plan-unprecedented-wave-illness-among-faculty-members

[teach_write_research]

Putting another faculty on the LMS is good but they wouldn't have access to the official grade entry system. Possibly that would fall to registrar staff but maybe the dept head/chair - who is willing to take on the risk if there's a mistake with a student's grade?

In general, faculty health needs are not well-planned for right? Comparison point - at a previous job I had a pregnancy that overlapped with the second half of the term but put me "available" to submit final grades. I asked (because there's always risk), what if I'm physically unable to submit grades? The first reaction was to dismiss the possibility and avoid it. The closest to a backup plan they came up with was that everyone would get incompletes and I'd sort it out later. And that's a health need where we have plenty of advanced notice. Sudden incapacitating health needs don't seem to fit into academia's faculty ideal.

[Caracal]

Putting another faculty on the LMS is good but they wouldn't have access to the official grade entry system. Possibly that would fall to registrar staff but maybe the dept head/chair - who is willing to take on the risk if there's a mistake with a student's grade?

In general, faculty health needs are not well-planned for right? Comparison point - at a previous job I had a pregnancy that overlapped with the second half of the term but put me "available" to submit final grades. I asked (because there's always risk), what if I'm physically unable to submit grades? The first reaction was to dismiss the possibility and avoid it. The closest to a backup plan they came up with was that everyone would get incompletes and I'd sort it out later. And that's a health need where we have plenty of advanced notice. Sudden incapacitating health needs don't seem to fit into academia's faculty ideal.

Again though, I really just think it is just that it actually can generally be worked out. For example, the advantage of the inncomplete plan would be that if someone was supposed to graduate, or their grade was needed for some other reason,  the chair could almost certainly offer to come over to your office, grab the paper or final exam, and either grade it themselves or if it was too far out of their expertise, ask someone else to do it. In the cases I'm aware of where a faculty member has had a serious medical issue in the middle of the semester, tenured faculty have just team taught their course for the rest of the semester or there was a graduate student or somebody else around willing to take on the course for the rest of the semester.

I don't really think this is much different from most jobs. Most businesses don't have clear plans in place for exactly what would happen if somebody suddenly gets sick. The plan is "we would figure it out based on the circumstances and the workload."