SURVEY SAYS – What Are You Doing About the Swine Flu?

This week I asked readers what, if anything, your workplace was doing about the swine flu outbreak.

The most common response – 52.8%  of this week’s respondents – said that they were encouraging hygienic behaviors, such as hand washing.   As unobtrusive as that approach is – and it’s admittedly early yet – the second-most cited response was “nothing yet” ( 40.4% ), while 28.1% said they were “talking about it” (more than one answer could be provided).

Nearly 17% ( 16.9% , in fact) said they were “dusting off that contingency/disaster plan”, while 4.5% were making preparations for more teleworking, and 3.4% were thinking about restricting travel.   

However, a full 14.6% were already restricting travel.   As one reader noted, “Any employee that travels by air must work from home for 48 hours after their return. Suppliers that would travel by air are being asked to reschedule their visits.”  

Another said they were “Requesting that employees who’ve returned from Me wait 48 hours before returning to work.”

"Other" preparations included:

"The Pandemic Preparedness and Response Team is meeting today, and met yesterday, to update the Pandemic Preparedness and Response Plan. We are posting handwashing reminder posters in the bathrooms, complete with instructions to be sure to wash with soap and water for at least 15 - 20 seconds and to wash hands often, especially after sneezing. We also sent an all-users e-mail reminding associates of how to protect themselves from infection, and referring them to a pandemic preparedness booklet we provided them a few years ago when everyone was preparing for avian flu. We are also watching the CDC website very carefully for updates. So far, there have been no reported cases in our State (Arkansas), though there have been some in a border state (Texas)."

"We sent out a special edition newsletter from our EAP vendor. It contained information about the outbreak and websites that employees could access to keep current."

"I work in the HR department of a multi-state health system and partnered with a co-worker in our Insurance & Risk department about 2 years ago to try and get some movement around planning for a pandemic. That fell over like a lead balloon. Maybe now we will see some interest."

"Some people are over-reacting (the same people who cry the sky is falling whenever anything out of the norm happens), but most are just doing business as usual. Our Corporate Security unit is "monitoring the situation", which I guess means watching the same news as the rest of us."

"Mostly just a distribution of information."

"Supplying us with hand sanitizer and cloths to wash our desk and phone."

We get lots of emails, saying they'll keep us updated. Like we're not bombarded with news every 2 minutes already...

"We're prohibiting any year end plan visits to Me (of course, this is pretty easy since we don't know how to create pensions in pesos). Seriously though, a local company with several hundred employees is requiring any of its employees who have been to Me within the past 10 or so days, to stay home for roughly a week, fully paid."

"With the frenetic media coverage of this yet-to-be-seen-whether-it's-really-a-pandemic-or-if-we're-all-aflutter-about-just-another-flu, we're trying to simply provide common-sense information to keep our employees from panicking."

"The company issued a bulletin describing the virus and its symptoms, urging employees with any of those symptoms -- or whose family members have any of the symptoms -- to stay at home. Also, in the event employees with these symptoms do come to work, managers are encouraged to send them home."

"We pulled out the kits we had to buy for the avian flu threat to see if there are any useful and non-expired products in them."

This week's Editor's Choice  goes to the reader who said, "We're ignoring it and hoping it goes away, as we do everything."

Thanks to everyone who participated in our survey!