Before we begin, it’s important to note this post doesn’t specifically refer to preventing COVID-19 in the workplace. There are plenty of guides and articles out there that can explain this to you in more detail. Instead, it’s about preventing other illnesses at work.
This is somewhat inspired by the recent pandemic, which has shown the importance of keeping people healthy. Sick workers make other workers sick, which leads to lots of people having time off work at once. It’s terrible for business productivity and can make you lose a lot of money.
Avoiding this issue should be a top priority. How do you avoid sickness in the workplace? It’s a case of preparing the environment, practising good hygiene, and understanding what to take time off.
Check your work environment
The environment you work in might cause sickness amongst employees. This is usually down to the presences of harmful things in the air. Asbestos is perhaps the most common example of this. Many buildings were built using this substance, and it is still around today. It can cause a host of health issues, which will quickly lead to sick employees taking time off work. Thankfully, there are ways to deal with and remove this problem. First, head to asbestos-sampling.com to buy a testing kit to see if asbestos poses a risk in the workplace. If it turns out you do, then you can take action.
You have things like Leafield roofing services that provide a special type of cladding, so it’s worth considering if your building needs this done to it. In general, it’s good to have a complete survey of your workplace to ensure no harmful toxins are in the air, causing harm to your employees.
Good hygiene
If coronavirus has taught us one thing, it’s that so many humans are unhygienic. It’s crazy that we had to be told to wash our hands to avoid spreading diseases! You should enforce some strict hygiene measures that prevent any conditions from spreading. One easy solution is to buy hand sanitiser for everyone’s desk or to put on the walls. Now, your employees have easy access to antibacterial hand gel, killing most germs before they can spread.
Encourage taking time off
This sounds counterintuitive as you want to prevent people from taking time off by stopping sickness at work. However, if someone does get sick, you need to tell them to stay away. Sick people coming into work will spread the disease and make more people sick. So, instead of five people off at the same time, you only have the original person staying at home.
Moreover, coronavirus has also taught us that a lot of work can be done from home. As such, you can tell sick people to stay at home but still attempt to work. This should handle some of the productivity issues you’re worried about. In turn, you avoid spreading sickness at work while also avoiding massive productivity dips.
People get sick all the time, but these steps can help you prevent it from spreading in the workplace. You’ll have fewer employees taking time off in one go, allowing you to continue working at peak efficiency. A healthy workplace is a happy workplace – keep that in mind!
