Franchise Business Planning For The H1N1 Flu

                    

As a franchise owner or employee, you don't want to be caught off-guard when this flu season hits. Regardless of the size or type of your business, a bit of planning now can put strategies into place that will help protect the business and its employees, when 2009 H1N1 flu hits. Plan now for the return of 2009 H1N1 to your community and for the potential for a more severe outbreak. It is important that the following list of recommendations be reviewed carefully and applied in the most appropriate way to your small business. 

{From www.cdc.Gov}

• Identify a workplace coordinator who will be responsible for dealing with 2009 H1N1 flu issues and their impact at the workplace, including contacting local health department and health care providers in advance and developing and implementing protocols for response to ill individuals. The coordinator should not wait for flu season to start in order to establish those contacts and relationships, and check online resources of local public health officials immediately to learn what you should be doing.

• Examine policies for leave, telework, and employee compensation and review with all employees so they are up-to-date on sick leave policies and employee assistance services that are covered under any of your employee-sponsored health plans. Leave policies should be flexible, non-punitive, and well-communicated. They should allow workers who have the flu to stay home and away from co-workers. Also, plan to have workers stay home if they have to care for sick family members. Be prepared, in the event that there are school closures, to allow workers flexible schedules or other accommodations so they can mind their children and keep them safe at home. Explore the possibility of some of your workers working from home with appropriate infrastructure support.

• Determine who will be responsible for assisting ill individuals in the workplace, and make sure at least one person can serve as the “go to” person if a worker becomes sick at the workplace.

• Identify essential employees, essential business functions, and other critical inputs (e.g. raw materials, suppliers, subcontractor services/products, and logistics) required to maintain business operations should there be disruptions during the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak – and make plans on how to communicate with people that perform essential tasks to provide them assignments and work direction. Explore other ways you can continue business operations if there are supply chain or other disruptions.

• Share your pandemic plans with employees and clearly communicate expectations. It is important to let your employees know your plans and expectations when 2009 H1N1 flu outbreaks occur in communities where you have a workplace. Consider ways to communicate with employees who do not speak English or those with disabilities.

• Prepare business continuity plans so that if there is significant absenteeism or changes in the way you need to conduct business in the workplace during this outbreak you can maintain operations. School dismissals and childcare provider closures may increase absenteeism in the workplace. Health officials may also advise that workplaces take multiple steps to increase the space between people and decrease the frequency of contact among people, also known as “social distancing” to reduce the spread of illness during a more severe outbreak.

• Establish an emergency communications plan. This plan includes identification of key contacts (with back-ups), chain of communications (including suppliers and customers), and processes for tracking and communicating business and employee status.

Please take the above measures, and get ahead of the game, in case this flu season is a rough one.

Check out more tips for your business, and family, over at the CDC website.

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Comments

[Allen]

I appreciate the labor you have put in developing this blog. Nice and informative.

[Christopher, directory submission service]

It will be good idea to encourage employees (staff) to take vaccine for the 2009 H1N1 flu as soon as it is available so that their life is not disrupted. But right now they need to be cautious.