BASIC’s Preparations for the Flu Season

Published October 2009

BASIC’s Preparations for the Flu Season

As a follow-up to last month’s newsletter article titled Prepare Your Company for an Influenza Pandemic, BASIC would like to share our business continuity plan in case we are impacted during the upcoming flu season.

Our plan is based on prevention to minimize the spread of the flu virus along with cross-training back-up resources for critical business functions. Our preparation is designed to enable us to continue to serve our clients during a worst case scenario of 25 – 50% of workforce absence.

We believe offense is the best defense, which is why a large portion of our strategy is aimed at preventing or minimizing the spread of the flu virus. Some of the actions we’ve taken include:

  • We educated our employees as to how to prevent the spread of viruses.
  • We’ve placed hand sanitizers, hand cleansers, spray disinfectant and hospital quality wipes that are proven to kill almost all viruses, even HIV, throughout our offices. BASIC has also made these supplies available to be purchased by staff to use at home.
  • Every year BASIC pays for our employees and their families to be immunized with the flu vaccine. This year this will also include the H1N1 vaccination as soon as it is available.
  • Lastly, in order to minimize the spread of viruses we have a staff policy for workers with influenza-like symptoms to stay home until at least 24 hours after their fever has resolved and, if able, work from home.

The media repeatedly informs us that the flu season is going to hit hard this year, especially with the H1N1 virus. You may want to make plans for your own business to respond to the 2009-2010 Influenza Season: