Keeping Your Employees Healthy During Cold and Flu Season

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At Office H2O, we know that one of your first priorities as a business owner and employer is the health and wellness of your employees. After all, when employees are happy and healthy, they are far better equipped to focus on work matters and stay productive. Despite the fact that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires employers to make all reasonable efforts to ensure both the health and safety of their employees while on the job, this isn’t always easy.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, millions of cases of the common cold and influenza are reported each and every year (between 9.2 million and 35.6 million since 2010). During the peak of the cold and flu season, it is your responsibility as an employer to do everything possible to keep your employees healthy. Today, OfficeH2O will be sharing a few useful tips for keeping your employees healthy this cold and flu season.

Prioritize Good Hygiene

One of the easiest and most effective ways to keep your employees healthy this cold and flu season is by encouraging good hygiene practice. This involves encouraging all employees to wash their hands frequently, keep their workspaces clean, and regularly use hand sanitizer. As a helpful reminder, consider posting handwashing reminders in all restrooms throughout the office, providing disinfectant wipes for desks, and keeping hand sanitizer at every workstation.

Offer Company-Sponsored Flu Vaccinations

According to the Centers for Disease Control, getting an annual flu vaccination is the best way to combat the risk of catching the flu. The flu season starts around October in most places and can last until May of the following year. Employers can limit the spread of the flu and prioritize the health of their employees during flu season by offering flu shots free of charge to their employees. Contact a local drug retailer or occupational medicine center to set this up in your office!

Ask Employees to Stay Home When Sick

One of the most impactful ways to keep your employees healthy during the cold and flu season is by limiting the spread of illness. To do so, you should emphasize to your employees the importance of staying home if you are sick. Any workplace that puts employees in close proximity when working enables illness to spread like wildfire. You can also set a good example for your employees by sending sick people home to rest if they do come in to work. Further, even managers should stay home when they are feeling ill. Otherwise, coming in to work when they are feeling sick will send the wrong message to employees.

Encourage Your Employees to Drink Plenty of Fluids

It should be noted that good health practices in general keep the body strong and well-equipped to fend off illness. This includes staying hydrated and drinking plenty of fluids! In fact, one recent study found that staying hydrated may be responsible for boosting a particular immune response to enable the body to better fight off viruses. For this reason, you should encourage your employees to stay hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids, especially water.

The average person should shoot for drinking 6 to 8 glasses of water per day. You’d be surprised how much staying hydrated can help in keeping your employees healthy, happy, and free of sickness during cold and flu season!

Help Your Employees Stay Hydrated with Office H2O!

Now that you know some of the best ways to keep your employees healthy during this cold and flu season, including staying hydrated, it’s time to make access to clean drinking water in your office easier than ever! There’s no better way to do that than with an Office H2O bottleless water system! Our devices come equipped with the latest water purification technology, employing a 9-stage filtration process to ensure your water is safe to drink, tastes great, and is convenient.

Another feature that makes our bottleless water coolers essential, especially during cold and flu season, includes the Touch-Free feature. In addition to our self-sanitizing tanks and multi-stage filtration, we are now providing touch-free bottleless water coolers. Using the stylish foot pedal included in our bottleless water coolers, your office can continue to enjoy easy access to purified drinking water without ever having to touch the water dispenser. This means that our bottleless water coolers are perfectly designed for cold and flu season, as well as the current pandemic.

To find out more about our bottleless water coolers and how Office H2O can help provide safe, clean drinking water for you and your employees, visit our website today.

Photo by Christine Sandu on Unsplash