Why are vaccinations necessary? Why should every business take steps to ensure that employees remain vaccinated? How to motivate employees to receive the flu vaccine? Let us look at the answers to these questions in the following sections.
Why are vaccinations necessary?
If any employee becomes sick due to the flu it will be a concern for your company. There are two things that can happen in these situations, either the affected employee will take a sick leave and stay home or they will come into the office and infect other employees.
In the first instance, your business will be affected due to absenteeism and in the second situation you will face problems due to what is known as presenteeism.
Problems Caused by Flu
The negative thing about the flu virus is that it spreads quickly within the workplace and can infect 1 in 4 employees during the winter season. In case someone gets infected, the symptoms become noticeable after 72 hours. This gives the flu virus enough time to spread to other employees in the office.
When infected, employees may have to take a leave for up to 5 days and such sickness reduces an employee’s productivity for as long as 2 weeks. If one employee becomes sick, it results in a loss of business that may be worth a few hundred dollars and if the virus infects more employees, then the business suffers even more.
Flu Vaccination – The Solution to Business Disruption
If businesses need to avoid or reduce business interruption then the best option is the flu shot. By implementing a vaccination program businesses will have the following benefits:
- Vaccinations from a travel clinic in Montreal brings down the chances of flu by seventy to ninety percent.
- Vaccinations will help in developing a healthy workforce.
- These steps will showcase a company’s commitment towards the improvement and well-being of their employees.
- This type of initiative will reduce work disruption and assist in maintaining optimum productivity.
- When a company bears the expenditure on vaccination, every employee takes advantage of the same.
How to motivate employees for flu vaccination?
Your focus should be on getting their support through the development of proper messages which will resonate and communicate the goal that your business wants to achieve.
The message should be such that it highlights the facts which are important for your employees. You will have to think about points that will make your employees seriously consider getting the vaccination.
Develop Effective Communication
Often when such internal campaigns are developed, managers usually do not have the means of relaying the message in the right way which will convince and educate employees.
Management teams generally concentrate on what the flu is and how employees can get the vaccination but, miss out on highlighting the point on why employees should get the vaccination, risks of flu and what impact flu has on their performance.
Thus, you will have to develop your message and at the same time communicate in the right manner for it to become effective.
In addition, you will have to select marketing material that will effectively communicate the message. Such marketing material could be exciting posters, videos explaining why it is important to get vaccinated, and similar other merchandise.
Right promotional material will make employees aware of the negative aspects of flu and how vaccination Montreal can help them.
Easy Access
To make sure employees get the shot, businesses should make them easily accessible as well as convenient to get. You can achieve this task by planning an on site campaign so that better engagement of employees can be achieved.
Necessity for Vaccination
Flu shots from a travel clinic in Montreal become necessary in different situations. For instance, in healthcare facilities and hospitals, employees have to treat infected people who are suffering from the flu. Since, chances of spreading diseases are quite high in the health care environment, it becomes necessary to vaccinate employees.
Similarly, restaurants may well get their employees vaccinated rather than holding vaccination clinics after any of their employees gets infected and puts the public at risk. In this situation, restaurants may be forced to organize customer vaccination clinic.
Thus, vaccinations become an investment in the health of employees and customers as well as in the health of their business. For example, one of the well-known communicable diseases is Hepatitis A and it spreads when fecal matter (very microscopic amounts) is ingested.
It spreads from one person to another or through contaminated food. However, it is a food borne illness that can be prevented through vaccination.
Steps Employers Can Take When Infection Becomes a Concern For Them
- Alternative Policies: Contemplate alternative policies that would prove to be helpful in protecting employees irrespective of their vaccination status. Some options to consider would include remote work and telecommuting opportunities. Moreover, staff at-risk can be asked to wear masks while they communicate with others.
- Emergency Leaves: Businesses should encourage workers to take medical or sick leave if they think they are going to fall sick. To facilitate, employers should provide extra emergency leaves in case any outbreak occurs.
- Disciplinary Steps: Businesses should take a decision in advance about the disciplinary and remedial steps that they will be taking if employees violate policies about work place diseases. Apart from violation in the form of failure in obtaining necessary vaccination, it could also include a type of violation where employee comes to the office while he is infected and fails to notify the necessary staff about the illness. It could also involve retaliating or harassing against ill co-workers or divulging confidential information. Businesses should ensure that such policies and their consequences when failure occurs should be intimated to employees and workforce should clearly understand the consequences they will have to face.
As we can see, investing in employee vaccination proves to be a wise decision and ensures that employees do not get sick or make colleagues sick.
Through vaccination businesses are able to increase employee productivity and reduce the risk of their customers becoming sick after getting the infection from your employees.
For some industries, such as the food industry that could mean closure of their business or cost prohibitive investments in community vaccination programs.