With flu season upon us, employers are reminded of just how important it is to be prepared to handle epidemics and other biological threats in order to protect their employees and their organizations. From employees with bedbugs and lice, to more serious – potentially life threatening – communicable illnesses, this week’s Tip provides best practice guidance for employers on how to respond to the threats presented by these epidemics, including how to handle the employee who is the source of the outbreak.
What Managers Can Do. Employers should make it clear to supervisory and managerial employees that they should not let employees with infections come back to work until they are cleared by their physician. Managers should require employees to obtain return to work authorizations from their physicians once they are cleared to return to work.
What Facilities Management Can Do. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommends that employers have adequate facilities and supplies at work to promote hand-washing and other good hygiene practices, and the appropriate cleaning of equipment and surfaces in the event of contamination.
Responsibilities of the Infected Individuals. It is not just employers who have responsibilities to protect their employees. Infected employees also have certain responsibilities. They should cover and take care of any infection as directed by their health care provider; clean their hands; and avoid sharing personal items. While an employee who is infected may feel like he/she is unable to afford another day out of work, the employee still should get clearance from his/her health care provider before returning to work. Indeed, many employers may now be required to provide employees with paid sick leave. If that is the case, you may have to provide your infected employee with paid time off, so he/she can return to work free of infection.
Cleaning Services. Employers should instruct (and, to the extent necessary, continue to require) cleaning services to focus on surfaces that touch people’s bare skin each day and any surfaces that could come into contact with uncovered infections.
Policies can Help. Companies should have policies about keeping the workplace clean, not just because of various infections (like the flu) but also because of the danger of all types of contagious diseases. If you have an infectious disease control policy, plan to re-communicate it to everyone soon to remind them of the importance of keeping the workplace infection free.
Handling the Source of the Outbreak. Protecting an infected employee’s privacy while protecting the health and safety of other workers is a delicate balancing act involving the interplay of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and state privacy statutes. Below are some steps that will help you balance these sometimes competing interests:
Investigate. Learn the facts, and do not rely on rumors.
Notify colleagues of the fact that there is an infected employee and advise colleagues to undergo testing, but maintain privacy as much as possible. There is no reason to
identify the infected person by name.
Interview the infected employee or, if the person is too ill, talk with a family member.
An employee’s doctor will not be able to disclose information without the employee’s
authorization.
If the employee does not want to cooperate with your investigation, explain that you
are concerned about the employee’s health but also that of the employee’s coworkers;
tell the person that you will make efforts to protect his/her privacy but that the
employee should keep in mind that co-workers could be affected.
You can disclose to the infected employee’s supervisor that the employee will need
leave, and the amount of leave the employee is estimated to need.
Sending Infected Workers Home. Generally, unless directed by a health care provider, an employee with an infection does not need to routinely be excluded from work. Rather, each situation requires its own analysis. Until their infections are healed, workers with active infections should be excluded from activities where skin-to-skin contact with the affected skin area is likely to occur or where airborne viruses can be passed from one person to the next.
Ensuring Business Continuity During a Time of Crisis. While an outbreak of the flu is generally not considered a crisis in the workplace, depending on the size of your business, and the number of workers impacted by an illness, your organization’s bottom line may be impacted by an outbreak. A business continuity plan is a logistical plan that details how an organization will recover interrupted critical business functions after a disaster or disruption has occurred. Employers should take actions to review existing business continuity plans currently in place to ensure that the plan will work in the event of an epidemic. If no business continuity plan exists, employers should begin to develop a plan for a worst-case scenario that may occur during the flu season.