Prolific and highly contagious, the influenza virus raises its head every winter, spreading through schools, homes, and offices like wildfire.
The 2019 season got off to a particularly nasty start, with over 110,000 people being diagnosed with the flu by 1st July. This was almost double the number of the previous year. In NSW during the last week of June, every sixth person presenting to hospital emergency departments had respiratory or flu-like symptoms.
Whether you need to be admitted to hospital or not, the flu has the potential to knock you out for days and even a couple of weeks.
For businesses, the toll is high, with reports saying absenteeism costs an estimated $7 billion each year. So-called ‘presenteeism’ is also a concern, with those who show up to work feeling sick being less productive and spreading the virus to others.
Preventing workplace illness with flu shots
To reduce the impact of the flu season, many Australian businesses now offer flu shots to employees free of charge. Some send a group to visit a doctor’s clinic, while others organize in-house vaccinations.
The in-house experience involves a qualified and experienced nurse visiting your office to administer flu shots. These professionals are able to provide the flu vaccine to between 20 and 30 people per session. Most companies begin booking flu shot sessions from April when the season begins to take off.
The benefit of having a nurse onsite at a planned time is those staff members who wish to have flu shots don’t have to travel en masse to a medical clinic. This saves them from having to spend a couple of hours away from their desks.
Providing flu shots at work adds a great deal of convenience. It motivates those who wouldn’t usually set aside the time, or who may not make the vaccination a priority. All they have to do is add their name to a list and walk down the hall for a quick and relatively painless needle.
Mid to large companies with more than a dozen employees can definitely benefit from offering flu shots on site. For companies with different shifts, it makes sense to book the nurse at changeover time. This way, those who are finishing up and those starting work for the day can all have their flu shots within the same time-window.
Why have company flu shots?
The return on investment of paying a nurse to visit the office in person will be a significant reduction in absenteeism during the worst of the flu season.
What’s more, by vaccinating your staff, you are helping prevent the spread of disease throughout the wider community. While many people simply need to spend a few days in bed with the flu, the elderly, those with chronic illness and very small children face far more serious threats to their health.
The Conversation reports, flu shots remain a safe and reasonably effective strategy to reduce the risk of serious illness. Offering it to your staff can help them and your business to enjoy a healthy and productive winter.
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