We're all going to the birds...

Interesting debate at work at the moment… With the background of Bird Flu and the fact that I work in Risk Management and hence am a part of my companies “Bird Flu Response”, I have been getting alot of material on this very subject.

Not that I have anything new that isn’t already being reported, just that I get to review it with the companies interests / concerns in mind.  Along with HR and other divisions, I am getting involved at a level that I don’t particularly care for.  My personal view is that if the Bird Flu mutates and becomes a human plague, then we’re stuffed.  No policy that I can write or assist to formulate will prevent it… I guess I have a bit of a fatalist approach.

But this is only background to the debate in my own department which is now spreading (hah! like a virus!!) to other departments.  One of the key notions about Bird Flu prevention is a two pronged strategy around personal hygiene and the treatment of staff who are sick with the flu.  The first is what it is – Personal Hygiene.  You can’t have a place of employment dictating that all employees must have certain standards of personal hygiene.  I’d like to think that people do, but you can’t “enforce” that everyone bathes and washes their hands.  The second point though is the treatment of people who are sick in the work place.  Essentially enforcing that people who have the flu (and I am talking regular not Bird) stay at home until they are better.

At the time we were looking at this material, one of my colleagues was off sick.  He was off Monday with the flu.  We made the usual jokes about “chucking a sickie to get a long weekend” and didn’t think much of it.  Well he came into the office on Tuesday and sounded horrendous.  Hacking cough, sneezing, a voice that sounded like he had gravel in his throat… He said he felt “fine” and he worked through the day and yet his symptoms didn’t seem to get better.  Well yesterday, the girl who sits opposite him in the open plan office was off with the flu.  She clearly caught it from him and she was in the line of fire so to speak.

This prompted yesterday’s debate at the office as to whether companies should a) ensure that staff take the appropriate amount of leave to ensure that they are fully better and b) should we have sent this clearly sick person home?

This though would go against the grain of our workplace culture where you work until you drop dead… is my company unusual in that regard or are we “standard” and that this notion of telling people to go home and take that “extra day” to get over the flu is doomed to failure?