During the flu season, it’s common to notice your employees dropping like flies. The first cough or cold of the flu season can spread around the workplace and quickly impact the entire workforce. Before you know it, you’re facing employee absences, sick leave and a drop in productivity as your employees become unwell.

The flu season brings around Influenza, which can be a serious and highly contagious illness, particularly in the workplace where employees are in proximity to one another. It occurs every year and affects businesses through reduced productivity levels and increased absences.

At BizHealth, we’re dedicated to protecting your employees and your business by spreading awareness of health and providing you with services that help maintain high levels of well-being amongst your employees. So, how do you get ahead of the curve and protect your workplace from the incoming flu season?

What Is The Flu?

To successfully manage and prevent a flu outbreak in your workplace, it is important to understand what it is and how it spreads. The flu is a shortened term for Influenza, which is a contagious respiratory illness. It can infect and impact the nose, throat or the lungs, often manifesting into symptoms such as sneezing, coughing, fever, fatigue, headaches and congestion.

Influenza is highly contagious as it spreads through droplets that are produced from sneezing or coughing and are inhaled or come into contact with other individuals. It can also be transmitted through surfaces that the infected person touches. Individuals are most contagious from one day before their illness starts, right up until day seven of their illness, which makes it highly difficult to manage the spread and contamination of the illness.

How Does It Affect My Workplace?

As the illness spreads throughout your workplace, you will notice an increase in absenteeism amongst your employees, which impacts the productivity of your business. Even as employees come in unwell, their general working levels are lower, and they are still infecting your other employees. As this cycle persists, you will notice the financial impact of the flu on your business and the output you gain from your employees.

It is estimated that each year, the flu is responsible for approximately 20-75% of employee absences.

What You Can Do To Protect Your Workplace

There are measures that you can implement to minimise contamination and the spread of the flu in the workplace. For instance:

• Maintain a Clean Environment: Keeping your workplace clean and hygienic helps to minimise the spread of the flu amongst colleagues. This includes enforcing measures, including regular cleaning of doorknobs, surfaces, etc.
• Promote Hygiene: To ensure that all colleagues are hygienic and safe, you can promote hygiene through posters that encourage proper hand washing techniques, providing hand sanitisers and spreading awareness regarding covering coughs and sneezes so that germs aren’t spread.
• Support Sick Leave: It’s important to promote a healthy sick leave policy that allows employees to act appropriately if they are too unwell to come into work, as this will help minimise the spread between employees.
• Internal Communication: Through internal communications, such as emails, posters and shared articles, you can educate your workforce on the importance of staying safe during flu season and safe practices to minimise contagion.

Workplace Flu Vaccinations: The Most Important Measure Of All

The best thing you can do for your workplace and workforce is to offer BizHealth’s workplace flu vaccination program. Vaccinations are the most effective method in preventing the flu, with a 70-90% risk reduction in healthy individuals.

Flu vaccinations are an effective way to protect your employees and are one of the most efficient methods, as:

• They are convenient, as we’ll bring our team of healthcare professionals to your workplace and organise a time and schedule that is most convenient for your business.
• They promote a safe and respectful working culture and environment. Your employees will feel respected when you offer health services that are designed to protect them and their well-being.
• You can benefit from herd immunity. So, the more employees who are protected with the vaccine, the less the virus can be contracted, and if it is, it is generally less contagious.
• Flu vaccines help to spread awareness of safe practices during flu season and educate your workforce about the illness and how it is spread.

BizHealth Workplace Flu Vaccinations

It’s easy to offer flu vaccinations to your employees with BizHealth, as we’ll take care of everything for you. We come to your workplace and set up a station of healthcare professionals who can carry out flu vaccinations according to your business’s schedule.

Educating your employees on flu season and taking the appropriate measures to protect them ensures that your employees feel valued. However, it also helps to protect your business from increased absences and lack of productivity, which can impact your business for an entire season.

We’re committed to making workplace flu vaccinations seamless and easy. If you need further information or you’re ready to get started, contact our team today.