Consider a scenario when half your

While to date the effects of Swine Flu seem to have been less severe than
some feared, its threat raised questions over how well prepared UK Plc is
for a serious pandemic, Mark Cosh offers some advice on reducing the
impact of illnesses such as Swine Flu in the workplace

Consider a scenario when half your
staff are ill at home and the rest
won’t come near the place for fear
of being infected? What about when
customers, knowing that you have staff
ill with flu, refuse to set up
appointments with your sales people or
have contact with your delivery drivers?
Businesses can no longer afford to ignore
the threat of pandemic flu and need to act
to create a clearly defined policy to reduce
its potential impact and to define a
management structure to put the policy
into practice.

First steps
The CEO should be designated
immediately, before infection strikes, as
the organisation’s pandemic co-ordinator
and should set up and train a pandemic
response team which will:
Draft a flu plan to limit damage caused
to the company
Maintain the team’s awareness of
global developments in flu
Develop training and awareness
materials for the business
Ensure that links are maintained with
suppliers and customers in planning
for pandemic flu
While the pandemic plan is being
created, the response team should begin,
without delay, and without waiting for flu
to take hold, get staff together and
establish an asepsis regime. Even without
serious flu, this will dramatically reduce
cross-infection of colds, seasonal flu and
tummy bugs, and will reduce absence.

Make it a rule that:
Everyone washes their hands in soap
and water (not just alcohol scrub)
when they arrive and every time they
move from one area to another, reenter
the premises after going out or
visit the lavatory
Every time someone coughs or sneezes,
they must dispose of the tissue into a
polythene bag or by flushing it down
the lavatory – and must wash their
hands immediately
Desk surfaces, phones, chairs, door
handles, security keypads and lift
controls must be disinfected every
evening. Supply disinfectant wipes to
everybody
Anyone showing signs of flu must go
home and stay there, and their desk,
work station and any equipment they
use must be disinfected immediately
Will that stop people in your company
being infected? No. But it will reduce
cross infection at work and keep new
cases to a minimum.

And when infections acquired outside hit
the staff?
Step up the asepsis regime as in your
swine flu plan
Reconfigure work-site layouts so
employees work at least one metre
from colleagues
Avoid shared use of telephones and
mobiles
Avoid face-to-face meetings – use
telephone and email
Where meetings are unavoidable, meet
only in large rooms and stay one metre
apart
Avoid crowded/heavily populated
places
Avoid busy periods on public transport
Arrange dedicated transport to/from
work for essential workers.

Establish flexible working policies that
enable line managers to agree homeworking,
different shift patterns, or
relocation to a site more local to the
employee’s home
If infection is rife, consider having a
disinfecting vaporisaton.

SitexOrbis’s vaporisation infection
control, for example, uses a recently
developed antibacterial agent that has
been proved to eliminate the swine flu
virus. Tested both in the laboratory and in
practical use, the agent is of proven
biological efficacy and kills 99.9999% of
all known viruses and bacteria, including
salmonella, MRSA, Clostridium Difficile,
SARS, Listeria, avian flu and H1N1
influenza A type viruses, both airborne
and on surfaces, in minutes. It has no
detrimental effect on staff, customers or
animals.

Disinfecting vaporisation can be carried
out in the evening or early morning to
minimise disruption – but even done
during the working day needs staff out of
the building only for about an hour.

Paperwork, stock and office or factory
equipment will be safe and undamaged by
the process.

Keep up the asepsis
With disinfection complete, strict asepsis
must be maintained by everyone.

Logically, if your company is the safest
place around, other places are less safe.

You must protect your work environment
from infection brought in from outside.

Ensure that staff know they must not
come to work with cold or flu symptoms.

Put signs in entrance doors telling visitors
not to enter if they feel unwell. Include
the main entrance to your building, the
door fittings and the reception furniture
in the daily asepsis routine.

Mark Cosh is european director of
SitexOrbis