As a small business owner or employee, you do not want to be caught unprepared when the 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. It is important that you plan now for the return of 2009 H1N1 to your community and for the potential for a more severe outbreak.

Why should small business owners prepare their workplace for the 2009 H1N1 flu?

Also, small businesses are especially susceptible to the negative economic impacts of a flu pandemic. An estimated 25 percent of businesses do not reopen following a major disaster, according to the Institute for Business and Home Safety. Planning from the outset can help offset business losses, and protect your business and your employees when this flu hits.

Over the past several years, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have developed guidelines, including checklists, to assist businesses, industries, and other employers in planning for a pandemic outbreak as well as for other potential disasters.

Please review the following list of tips to keep your business place healthy. For more information on preparedness, please visit http://www.cdc.gov/H1N1flu/business/guidance/smallbiz.htm

Keeping Healthy: 10 Tips for Businesses

Employees are a crucial resource at any business, and especially small businesses. There are steps you can take now, and during the flu season, to help protect the health of your employees.

1. Develop policies that encourage ill workers to stay at home without fear of any reprisals.
   
2. Develop other flexible policies to allow workers to telework (if feasible) and create other leave policies to allow workers to stay home to care for sick family members or care for children if schools close.
   
3. Provide resources and a work environment that promotes personal hygiene. For example, provide tissues, no-touch trash cans, hand soap, hand sanitizer, disinfectants and disposable towels for workers to clean their work surfaces.
   
4. Provide education and training materials in an easy to understand format and in the appropriate language and literacy level for all employees. See www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/business.
   
5. Instruct employees who are well but who have an ill family member at home with the flu that they can go to work as usual. These employees should monitor their health every day, and notify their supervisor and stay home if they become ill. Employees who have a certain underlying medical condition or who are pregnant should promptly call their health care provider for advice if they become ill.
   
6. Encourage workers to obtain a seasonal influenza vaccine, if it is appropriate for them according to CDC recommendations (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/keyfacts.htm). This helps to prevent illness from seasonal influenza strains that may circulate at the same time as the 2009 H1N1 flu.
   
7. Encourage employees to get the 2009 H1N1 vaccine when it becomes available if they are in a priority group according to CDC recommendations. For information on groups recommended for seasonal and H1N1 vaccines, please see www.flu.gov. Consider granting employees time off from work to get vaccinated when the vaccine is available in your community.
   
8. Provide workers with up-to-date information on influenza risk factors, protective behaviors, and instruction on proper behaviors (for example, cough etiquette; avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth; and hand hygiene).
   
9. Plan to implement practices to minimize face-to-face contact between workers if advised by the local health department. Consider the use of such strategies as extended use of e-mail, websites and teleconferences, encouraging flexible work arrangements (for example, telecommuting or flexible work hours) to reduce the number of workers who must be at the work site at the same time or in one specific location.
   
10. If an employee does become sick while at work, place the employee in a separate room or area until they can go home, away from other workers. If the employee needs to go into a common area prior to leaving, he or she should cover coughs/sneezes with a tissue or wear a facemask if available and tolerable. Ask the employee to go home as soon as possible. Workers who have symptoms of influenza-like illness (see above) should stay home and not come to work until at least 24 hours after their fever has resolved. You should plan now to allow and encourage sick workers to stay home.