Stopping employee illnesses

Are you dealing with a lot of sick leave? If you find that you have employee absences all the time, you need to do something about it. While it is common to see an increase in absenteeism during cold and flu season, losing your entire staff for months at a time can really cost you a lot of money in productivity costs and it can also cause you to struggle with employee morale as your other employees are left to pick up the extra work. You need to focus on keeping the office clean and healthy so it will improve productivity but so it will also boost employee morale.

Absenteeism can cost employers roughly $100 billion every year! This cost includes medical expenses along with sick leave pay and lost productivity. Since this is such a high cost, many employers are asking themselves "what can I do" in order to reduce this cost and to try and get their staff healthy once again.

There are a lot of things that can lead to employee absenteeism but one of the biggest problems you may see is stress. Your employees may be spread too thin and this is causing them to struggle to stay healthy. When the body is under a great deal of stress it cannot work properly. This can cause you to have issues with your health since you have a weakened immune system and a typical cold and flu bug will end up infecting you and can linger with symptoms for months.

How can an employer help their employees to manage stress? Not everyone is keen on exercising even though this is a proven stress reliever. If you have employees that just don't want to exercise, you will need to look for other ways to help them manage their stress level. Call each employee into your office individually and have meetings with them. You should go over their workload and look for things that you can do in order to help them manage stress. This might mean that you need to reassign some of their work to other people and that is just fine. It will give other employees the chance to step up and take on more responsibility, which is a great way to find people for future management positions in the company. You are also able to work with the employee so you can set goals that they feel comfortable with and goals that they will not stress over.

A great way to reduce the stress level in the office is to encourage your employees to take breaks and relax once and awhile. Encourage them to get up and walk around the building or just walk around the office. Provide your employees with access to a breakroom so they can get away for a bit and will be able to actually relax and not think about work. It is a wise idea to invest in an office gym so your employees can run for 20 minutes during their lunch break. You need to do what you can in order to encourage your staff to get active and to really help them learn to manage stress.

Keep the office clean. It is common for germs to spread like wildfire in an office that is small and filthy. Clean the office daily and encourage your staff to clean their desks daily as well. You should also use sanitizers in the office to reduce the spread of germs as well. It's a great way to keep your office healthier and to really cut down on the amount of absenteeism that may occur.