Prepare Your Workplace for a Flu Pandemic

Is your workplace ready if a flu pandemic develops in the U.S.? This article gives employers and employees some key points in order to prepare the workplace for an outbreak of the flu, which could spread around the world.

According to the Department of Labor's OSHA division, there are certain things that employers can do to become ready. The information provided by OSHA may be reproduced without permission (see OSHA.gov). Feel free to hang it up in your office, email it to employees, or otherwise get the word out about the risks associated with pandemic flu. Read on for brief highlights of what pandemic flu means, how to group employees for risk of getting the flu, and how your company can protect workers if such an event occurs and affects the workplace.

What is a Pandemic Flu?

It is important to educate supervisors and employees about the pandemic flu so that everyone in the organization understands the nature of such an outbreak, what it causes, and who faces the most risk for exposure. According to OSHA, "Pandemic influenza refers to a worldwide outbreak of influenza among people when a new strain of the virus emerges that has the ability to infect humans and to spread from person to person." This type of an event may not only result in widespread infection, but it can cause panic among everyday citizens. Your employees may not be aware of this possibility or what they can do about it. OSHA points out that vaccine supplies could take months to be dispensed to the general population. In the mean time, people can get seriously ill and even die from a new strain of the flu.

There is a risk for your staff if one of your employees gets infected with the flu by someone else and then brings it to the workplace. Once it is in the workplace, it can spread to other employees. The flu is spread in three ways. The first way is that a person comes into contact with a large or small droplet of the flu on his/her eyes, nose, or mouth. People can also get flu by touching infected surfaces and then touching their eyes, nose, or mouth. The third vehicle for transmission is if small particles of influenza are transported in the air.

Influenza is so easily transmitted that it is easy to visualize how such a new strain could spread rapidly in the U.S. and throughout the world.

What Positions Are the Riskiest for Exposure?

Your company has different categories of employees, even though the classification method may be unique to your organization. Regardless of how workers are grouped, certain workers face higher risk for exposure to the flu than others. One way to prepare employees is to conduct an analysis of each worker's risk and then educate each employee about his/her respective risk.

The following four risk levels are useful to classify your employees and are reprinted exactly from OSHA.gov:

*Very high exposure risk occupations are those with high potential exposure to high concentrations of known or suspected sources of pandemic influenza during specific medical or laboratory procedures.

*High exposure risk occupations are those with high potential for exposure to known or suspected sources of pandemic influenza virus.

*Medium exposure risk occupations include jobs that require frequent, close contact (within 6 feet) exposures to known or suspected sources of pandemic influenza virus such as coworkers, the general public, outpatients, school children or other such individuals or groups.

*Lower exposure risk (caution) occupations are those that do not require contact with people known to be infected with the pandemic virus, nor frequent close contact (within 6 feet) with the public. Even at lower risk levels, however, employers should be cautious and develop preparedness plans to minimize employee infections.

If your organization employees medical personnel, you need to develop a great plan for how your workplace will respond in the event of a flu outbreak. For smaller organizations with zero to few employees with very high or high risk, there is still an overall risk because employees can contact the virus outside of the workplace (i.e. living with a family member who works in a medical setting). OSHA recommends that all organizations develop a contingency plan.

How Employers Can Protect Employees

OSHA recommends two general strategies for reducing transmission of flu in each workplace. Employees should wash their hands and keep surfaces clean. They should use "social distancing" which means keeping employees at safe distances when possible. Employers can use employee training to prepare employees for all the safety protocols and contingency planning that the organization develops for response to a flu pandemic. The training can actually be expanded to include how employees should respond in other types of emergencies.

Each workplace can take other precautions such as safety and engineering controls to reduce the potential for transmission. This is a very technical process which should be researched in depth by the employer. Employees and employers should inform everyone about the risks of pandemic flu because if an outbreak occurs, no one will be safe.