Dealing with outbreak / illness at work

egrizzly

How have your managers dealt with illness/outbreak at the IT desk. We have a group of 8 in the building where I work at and everyone there seems
to have come down with some kind of outbreak (or flu). They're all basically coughing incessantly and uncontrollably.

Phalanx

This is why it is dangerous as a manager to ignore when someone gets ill in your team. I'm not saying send them home the second they start coughing slightly, but be open to the idea of allowing them to work from home to clear the illness, or give them flexible working hours to cover doctor appointments or when there are less people in the office.

If you've got a whole team coughing badly, then that's going to be an illness spreading through the team. Your manager needs to manage the situation, possibly by asking people to rotate through doctor appointments and the like.

scaredoftests

There ought to be a policy (sad, because it is common sense).

cyberguypr

We send sick people home either to work remotely or just take the day off. I rather have 1 guy out than 3 or 4 a week later.

hurricane1091

No one wants sick people around them at work. Taking a couple/few days off feels for being sick feels like a waste though, so it's a tough thing to manage. My old boss told me to just not come to work if I was sick and take the day off, but not using one of my vacation/personal days. Great boss.

jamesleecoleman

At the places that I worked at, people wouldn't send me home. At my last job and this one, I'm the only IT person and I would have to send myself home or call in. I usually try to push through whatever I have as best as I can.

keenon

when i was the manager, i had standing policy if your sick work remote. don't even bother driving to work

kiki162

When I used to work in an office. Anytime one person got sick, it eventually spread to everyone else in the group. Unfortunately this is common in most workplace environments. More often then not, there isn't going to be a policy from HR.

Managers should go to that person(s) directly, and just be blunt about it...like hey ALL of you are hacking and coughing, go home, go to the dr's, get some meds...etc.

It's probably viral going around the office, so usually it takes a couple of weeks. You can also go up to the "germy" people and ask them, hey "why don't you get some cough meds", or "I hope you feel better soon", or my favorite "stay the hell home and stop spreading ****".

Or if you really wanna drop hints, put some cough meds, Tylenol, hand sanitizer, and a ton of oil of oregano to go around for everyone for xmas. LOL.

heartgold

One of the benefits when working remotely!