Employee illness can cost employers a lot of money. Not only does it mean you have to pay for sick pay, but you also miss out on your employee’s work when they’re away, and you may have to hire a temp to replace them. That’s why it’s worth investing in illness prevention, and here’s how you can help cut employee sickness in the workplace.
Encourage healthy lifestyles
Employees who are generally healthy tend to take less sick time, and if they do fall ill, they can fight things like infections much more easily, so they take shorter periods of absence.
You can encourage your employees to be healthier by:
- Providing free exercise sessions or encouraging employees to walk at lunchtime
- Providing free healthy snacks such as fruit, so employees are less likely to eat sugary snacks
- Offering access to healthcare schemes
- Ensuring people take their breaks and encouraging a low stress culture
While you can’t force employees to live a healthy life, there are ways you can encourage them to do so, which can pay off in the long-term.
Get regular cleans
Nobody wants to work in a dirty workplace. At best, it can be distracting and bring down morale, and at worse, it can actively make people sick. This is especially true during cold and flu season, where touching dirty surfaces can spread all sorts of infections. It’s worth hiring a company such as JAN-PRO AU, who can carry out regular cleans, and even do a special deep clean now and again, to keep your office as germ-free as possible. Your employees will be much happier in this clean environment too.
Embrace home working
In the past, employees who’ve had a mild illness but felt OK to work have often struggled in, which ends up with them sitting behind their desk, coughing and sneezing and spreading germs. Luckily, most jobs can now be done from home, at least for a day or two, so you should consider encouraging people to work remotely when they have something infectious.
Cutting down on sickness can help boost productivity and save your business money. Making some small investments now, such as healthy living initiatives and deep cleaning, can help stop the spread of illnesses in the workplace, which means in the long term, you can save cash. It also helps boost employee morale, as they feel valued and can enjoy their time at work.
