Before the onset of the flu season in New Zealand, numerous businesses and enterprises in Auckland roll out their own flu vaccination programs to make it easier for their employees and workers to get the flu shot. Yet there are still quite a number who overlook the need to do this every year that they sometimes forget to get themselves and their family vaccinated. Those among us who’ve had the flu in the past know all too well it could get bad at times. 

It’s always good to be prepared. No matter how well you look after yourself, there’s always the risk that you or any member of your family might catch the flu. It’s the reason why many businesses in Auckland set up their own flu shot clinics or onsite stations. It’d be awesome if you can have an onsite workplace vaccination campaign to ensure your staff is protected where you can provide flu jabs to employees.

Here are some of the benefits of getting a flu vaccination in the workplace:

1. Reduces Time Missed From Work To Get Vaccinated

Organising an onsite workplace flu vaccination program at your work premises can encourage most, if not all, of your workers to get vaccinated. If employees have to go someplace else to get their flu shots, chances are that a host of multiple reasons would spring up for them not to go just when they’re about to head to the clinic.

Each has a lot of priorities at the top of their minds, and it could be easy to skip vaccination at the last minute. The benefit of offering onsite flu shots at your workplace is they won’t have to miss work just to get vaccinated. It’s convenient to go to the clinic or a breakout room, and they can even go by teams.

It’d also significantly increase the chances that your employees will be vaccinated. 

2. Reduces Absences Due To Illness

Getting more of your employees vaccinated by having an onsite campaign at the workplace will greatly reduce absences among them due to illnesses. Having the flu shot significantly reduces the risk that your employees would get sick from the flu by up to 60%.

Keep in mind that the cost of lost productivity when employees are downed with the flu does have a financial cost to your business. And this amount doesn’t include yet the direct medical costs when they do get sick such as prescribed medicines, doctor’s visits, and perhaps even hospitalisation. This also doesn’t include the intangible disruption of workplace teamwork and cohesiveness whenever team members are absent due to the flu.

3. Vaccination Is Often Already Covered In Health Insurance

Flu vaccination is oftentimes offered by healthcare providers and can be covered in healthcare insurance. Having an onsite campaign wouldn’t cost you additional premiums. In fact, it’d help your business make sure that all of your employees avail themselves of the flu vaccination coverage in their health plans, which most employers pay for anyway.

Even if the flu vaccine prepared by healthcare experts and made available doesn’t perfectly fit the kind of vaccine needed against the virus strain going around this season, there are still a lot of benefits. Having your employees vaccinated will reduce the symptoms if they still do get sick of the flu. Their stronger immunity could lessen the cases of ICU admission and the number of days spent in the hospital. It could also spell the differences between life and death.

4. Reduces Healthcare Costs Overall

Getting your employees vaccinated with the flu shot greatly increases the overall immunity of everyone in your organization. Since it significantly reduces the chances of people getting sick with influenza, it’ll also greatly reduce the chance of sick people spreading the virus in your workplace.

Employees who are vaccinated with the flu shot tend to be sick for a shorter number of days due to respiratory ailments. This also significantly lowers the potential spread of the flu if employees had to come to the workplace sick. This reduced probability of sickness and of getting hospitalized has an impact on your health plan premiums.

Instil A Culture Of Health And Wellness

By having an onsite workplace vaccination campaign, you’re building a culture of health and wellness in your entire organisation and among your employees. It’s highly important for everyone to stay healthy. It’s the only way you can all continue doing your work at your best. Having a healthy organisation on most days of the year can make a lot of impact on your productivity, work performance, and morale. Consider the ideas mentioned here as you plan and prepare.

If you’d like to talk to Onsite Health about our flu vaccination service please call 0800 357 357 today.

As autumn approaches, there is one thing New Zealanders can be certain of—flu season is just around the corner. At Onsite Health, we encourage employers to get their staff vaccinated beforehand through easy and convenient workplace flu vaccinations throughout the Penrose area. Read on to discover the benefits of providing this service for your employees. 

Because all strains of influenza are highly contagious and can be spread by coughing, sneezing, or not washing one’s hands properly, it’s in the interest of all organisations to do their part to reduce the incidence of flu by encouraging their staff to get their annual flu vaccination. Not only will this help protect those most vulnerable to the flu, but it will also reduce absenteeism and lost productivity on your end. For this reason alone, many employers have discovered that getting staff flu shots at their Penrose location simply makes good sense.

Since 2000, Onsite Health has provided quality workplace flu vaccinations in Penrose and throughout the greater Auckland region. Our trained staff of friendly and highly experienced Vaccinators can come to your physical address any time before the peak of flu season (which can begin as early as April or May) and provide your workers with reliable quadrivalent flu shots that have been tailored to combat the most prevalent flu strains expected to hit this season. 

To learn how you can schedule staff flu shots at your Penrose office or other location from Onsite Health, be sure to contact us at your earliest convenience. By acting before flu has a chance to take hold at your workplace, you’ll be taking a proactive stance in your company’s all-too-important human investment and your organisation’s overall productivity. 

More than 840,000 Kiwis caught the flu last year, but 3/4 of them would never have known they had contracted the highly contagious virus. Data from the Southern Hemisphere Influenza and Vaccine Effectiveness Research and Surveillance (SHIVERS) study, which analysed 2,500 adults and children randomly selected from general practices in Auckland show that 1 in 5 people in New Zealand – and 1 in 3 Kiwis under 19 – were infected with influenza in 2016. However, the SHIVERS study indicates that not everyone with the flu displays flu symptoms, or, even feels unwell enough to visit their GP. These infected individuals can still pass the flu on to others that they are in contact with through touch – or in the air – to those individuals likely to get sicker than themselves such as; infants, pregnant women, the elderly, and, people with pre-existing medical conditions. In the USA, flu’s impact is calculated at between 0.24% to 0.80% of GDP. It wasn’t clear in the SHIVERS study what cost flu was having on NZ’s employers, who could lose infected workers for 5 to 10 days. Some estimates in NZ suggest that sickness costs NZ businesses around 3% of their total salary and wage bill. Those individuals not protected from the flu by vaccination, but who still considered themselves fit and healthy, were just as likely to be infected with the flu. For further detail, please click on the link to The NZ Herald article (dated 21 September 2016).