5. Do your HR policies encourage potentially infections employees to come to work when sick?
As part of your efforts to build a stronger, more crisis-resilient organization, take time to consider all of your corporate policies and management practices in light of what you learn from your crisis management planning. Do your policies make sense?
If you’re worried about the impact of a pandemic disease outbreak (and you probably should be) do your day-to-day HR policies help or hinder your risk management efforts. The biggest things employees can do to minimize the risk of spreading infection in the workplace are to wash their hands frequently and to stay home when sick. Yet, many employers actively provide disincentives to this behaviour. They monitor and restrict bathroom breaks – and they do not pay employees who “call in sick.” As a result, employees feel compelled to come into work even when they’re obviously ill and continue to work after they’ve sneezed or coughed all over their hands. What are your policies?
Review your policies to make sure they make sense. If it’s unaffordable to routinely pay for all illness-related absences, then develop a strategy for dealing with a major disease outbreak. Perhaps, it makes economic sense to extend paid sick days when certain conditions have been triggered – such as a formal declaration of a pandemic event, for example. Or, alternatively, perhaps you will need to implement door way screening to ensure that sick employees do not come to work if a public health emergency is declared.
