Durban - Winter is a nightmare for employers who receive one doctor’s note after another as their employees get infected with flu and can’t make it to work.
Pharmacist and advocate of complementary medicines, Giulia Criscuolo, said according to Occupational Care South Africa, absenteeism due to flu costs the economy between R12 and R16 billion every year, and on average at least 15% to 30% of staff were absent every day.
Each day absent could cost a company at least three days’ worth of salary.
“Constant absenteeism has a knock-on effect on general productivity, profit margins and staff morale and the effect may be greater on smaller businesses due to the reliance on a smaller numbers of employees,” she said.
Criscuolo said employers had to find ways to decrease absenteeism related to flu illnesses. She said employers needed healthy employees to perform well and to ensure this, they should invest in staff wellness programmes which could included education on health, nutrition, fitness, mental health and team building.
Durban Chamber of Commerce chief executive Dumile Cele said the biggest cause of absenteeism in SA was the flu.
“Sick absenteeism should be at about 1.5%, which means that for every 250 working days per year, the average employee should take 3.75 days off sick. Most South African companies have an overall absenteeism rate of between 3.5 and six days, way over the acceptable limit.
Absolv Software, a research firm, has shown that 14.8% of the total sick absenteeism incidents in business are related to flu,” she said.
She said 13.8% of all sick leave taken by men was due to flu and 11.55% of that taken by women was due to flu.
Cele said statistics showed flu was the chief cause of workplace absenteeism from March to November.
“According to the Human Capital Review 2013 publication, almost R19 billion is lost due to sick absenteeism in SA every year, with the flu virus alone accounting for over R3 billion,” she said.
Cele said employers should stress the importance of staying at home while contagious, invest in IT solutions that allowed employees to work from home, and ask cleaners to frequently clean high-traffic surfaces.
Durban’s Dr Asif Suleman said “literally” every second patient that came in to doctors’ surgeries around this time had upper respiratory infection. Symptoms were a cough, sneezing, nasal discharge, fever and sore throat. He said they were mostly seeing bronchitis patients now, rather than straightforward flu.
“The bronchitis patients have a mixed bacterial and viral aetiology. The bacterial part is easy to treat, but we are using stronger doses of antibiotics due to increased antimicrobial resistance. Most of the bacterial infections are cleared in three to five days. The viral part can last as long as six weeks, with relapses, due to increased susceptibility and secondary bacterial infection,” he said.
Suleman said doctors were careful about issuing sick notes because they tended to be abused. “We are giving a maximum of three days off. However, we on review sometimes extend the severe bronchitis patients for a few more days if not hospitalised.”
THE MERCURY