TRENTON, N.J. — Big businesses are spending serious time and money trying to limit the swine flu pandemic’s impact on operations, from bankrolling video on good hygiene to training employees to cover for co-workers with critical jobs.
Companies from health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. to beverage can maker Ball Corp. are arranging for employees with flu symptoms or sick family members to work from home where possible, holding fewer meetings, even discouraging handshakes. And hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and tissues are at the ready everywhere as employers make keeping workers healthy their first line of defense.
Employers are playing Dr. Mom, teaching about hygiene, distributing information about the pandemic, telling folks to stay home if they get sick — generally with pay — and scrapping the required doctor’s note. Some companies have even distributed “wellness kits” with thermometers and face masks.
Whether those efforts and other measures will protect businesses will depend largely on whether the swine flu mutates into a more-dangerous virus.
“Large and mid-sized organizations are not going to go bankrupt. Small organizations, that could be different,” says Jim MacMicking of business continuity consultants SunGard Availability Services.
His company has seen a surge of customers seeking guidance on preparing for swine flu and either beefing up their telecommunications capacity or, if they can’t afford it because of the weak economy, reallocating laptops and other equipment to key personnel.
Dozens of companies interviewed report little effect — so far. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pandemic planners also have seen no big disruptions.
But a large Harvard School of Public Health study found two-thirds of businesses could not maintain normal operations if half their workers were out for just two weeks. And the CDC estimates every person who comes to work with swine flu will infect 10 percent of their co-workers.
So companies are heeding advice from health and business groups on how to avoid a catastrophe. Many have provided seasonal flu vaccines free to employees or even employees’ families and stepped up cleaning schedules.
Data storage company EMC Corp. now has doorknobs and handrails in every office scrubbed daily. Ford Motor Co. disinfects the work areas of anyone who’s had the virus.
Just about every company has done staff presentations on swine flu or set up an information site on its intranet. Health insurer Aetna Inc. posted a video internally and on YouTube in which cute little kids explain how not to get the flu: tinyurl.com/yjzsjzl.
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