Your employees are crucial to the success of your business. But with 37,844 confirmed flu cases in Canada as of May 2019, it’s important to protect your employees from falling sick.

Looking to protect your workplace from the virus? Here’s what you can do!

Educate Employees about the Importance of Hand Hygiene

Encourage your employees to wash their hands with soap instead of just water. Ensure that all the bathrooms have hand wash present. Make it a point to distribute hand sanitizers that are alcohol-based. This will reduce the spread of infections and illness. You can also have antiseptic wipes available to employees, so they can disinfect shared things like keyboards and doorknobs.

Emphasize on Getting Flu Vaccination Annually

According to the Government of Canada, flu vaccination is necessary for everyone who is six months and older. So encourage your employees to get vaccinated annually, especially during the flu season.

Connect with organizations that can help educate your employees about the importance of getting vaccinated. Similarly, go the extra mile by scheduling flu vaccination clinics for your workplace.  All of this will help prevent the flu virus from spreading among your employees.

Allow For a Flexible Schedule in Your Workplace

If one of your employees is sick, let them work from home. You can also offer them a sick leave to fully recover from the flu. Similarly, you can also let your employees take paid time away from work.

In short, as an employer ensure that your employees don’t feel pressurized to come in even when extremely sick. Having a flexible schedule will help your employees feel healthy and relaxed. It’ll also prevent the flu from infecting employees who aren’t sick.

Emphasize on Getting Flu Vaccination Annually

Educate Employees about the Proper Respiratory Etiquette

Coughing and sneezing without covering your face, is known to spread germs. So educate your employees about what constitutes as proper respiratory etiquette. If they’re sick, tell them to cover their mouths while coughing. Emphasize on always sneezing into a tissue. Also, provide access to wastebaskets and tissues near each of the work stations.

Educating your employees about seasonal flu can prevent a major outbreak from occurring in your workplace. If you’re looking to take this education a step further by training your employees in first aid, get in touch with Metro Safety.

Our Occupational First Aid Level 2 course ensures your employees are well-versed in how to keep others safe in the face of environmental illnesses outbreak.

If you’re in British Columbia, get in touch with us today!