If you oversee a department at a company or if you’re an owner and therefore automatically the caretaker of a small work space or business, then you must know the nightmarish nature of the idea of everyone falling sick because one person became ill and decided to come to work anyway. Something as simple as a common cold can catch on very fast, resulting in mass sickliness, a severe drop in attendance and efficiency, and a mild crisis for about a week or two. While this kind of thing would be manageable occasionally, the problem is that illness, unlike employees, don’t always take breaks. Read on to see if you can implement any of the suggested preventive and containment measures to make your office less of a health risk.
Give Them the Day Off
Oftentimes, people come into work even though they’re sick because they cannot afford to stay back. This could be minimized if you introduced a relaxed policy for sick days outside of normal leave days that will not affect your employees’ salary and other benefits. The risk of these holidays being misused is high, however, if you ensure that your workplace is somewhere that is fun and encouraging, and if you make sure you tell each person under you that they matter to your organization, they will be less likely to call in sick unnecessarily. If someone walks in visibly ill, ask them to go home, even if they have very important work to do that day. Having a sick person exposed to a dozen healthy people within a confined area for hours at a time is a sure-fire way of making your whole department fall sick; it is much easier to tell them to go home.
Make Medicine Accessible
Prevention is better than cure if there are deadlines to meet and targets to hit before the month ends. A simple way of preventing disease is to organize a day for right workplace influenza vaccines to be given to your people, along with other vaccines and medicines to be doled out to prevent contagious diseases from spreading. Having these ready to be taken is guaranteed to make your workers take the step to medicate themselves as opposed to neglecting their health until it becomes worse.
Cleanliness
Minor changes to how the office runs – having hand sanitizer outlets near frequently used areas, encouraging the use of separate mugs and cups at all times (to avoid spreading of germs), keeping the place clean at all times, keeping bathrooms dry and having mould dealt with immediately, for instance – will go a long way to keep the place clean and tidy.
Managing Resources
You may think it difficult to implement the aforementioned habits, policies and practices; if you know where to look, however, you will see that all of that which you require are readily available. There are travelling cleaning companies who are simply a call away, there are flu vaccination services that will arrange for your preventive measures to be carried out, there are professionals out there that specialize in keeping your office healthy and disease free. Contact them. Browse this website to find out more details.
By following the minute changes suggested, you can ensure that your department or small company – the office space, that is – becomes, stays and will continue to be health – risk free.
