As the flu season begins to pose its annual threat to business profitability in northern Nevada, health officials have two pieces of advice for managers.
* Make sure that everyone in the company gets a flu shot.
* Make sure workers who appear to be ill go home to recover.
While the flu season peaks during the winter months, the next few weeks will see a heavy schedule of vaccination clinics around northern Nevada.
Cari Rovig, program manager for the Northern Nevada Immunization Coalition, reminds employers that they need to treat influenza seriously.
On average, 36,000 Americans a year die and 114,000 are hospitalized due to complications from flu.
And that doesn't begin to address the havoc when companies lose employees sometimes several employees at once to the flu.
The best protection is immunization.
Rovig noted that health organizations such as Northern Nevada Medical Center, Saint Mary's and Washoe Medical conduct workplace immunization clinics.
Some insurance plans help pay the cost, and the clinics typically require employees to miss only a few minutes of work.
Other businesses, she said, provide incentives to employees who use community vaccination clinics.
At the very least, she suggested that businesses give employees paid time off to visit a flu-shot clinic.
(Schedules of community clinics can be found at www.co.washoe.nv.us/health.) Karen Nowicki, health promotions coordinator at Northern Nevada Medical Center, said businesses also can reduce the risk by encouraging germ-fighting practices among employers.
If employees hand off a telephone handset or a computer keyboard from one shift to one another, a few moments spent cleaning with alcohol can reduce the risk.
Employees should be encouraged, too, to wash their hands frequently to reduce the spread of the flu.
And if an employee shows symptoms of the flu: "Send them home," Nowicki said.
"People don't like to stay home, but if you're sick you need to go home."
Managers, she said, need to remember that they're protecting the rest of their staff when they put their foot down and send an ill worker home.
One other thought: Because this also is the budget season at many companies, Nowicki suggested that managers should consider an allocation in 2004 to pay for employee immunization.
