Flu Season Guidance

Flu Season Guidance for Employees

Flu season can begin as early as October.  Here’s how you can help stop the spread of the flu and keep yourself and others healthy.

Get a flu shot

The California Department of Public Health advises the best way to prevent influenza is to get a yearly flu vaccination.

Keep yourself and others healthy

Besides getting vaccinated, the following are additional steps you can take to protect yourself and others this flu season:

• Wash your hands often with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub.

• Cover your coughs and sneezes (cough or sneeze into an arm or shoulder or into a tissue).

• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth.  Germs spread that way.

• Eat a nutritious, well-balanced diet and get plenty of rest.

• While sick, limit contact with others.  Stay home if you have influenza symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat, or runny nose) to avoid infecting others.  If you have influenza, stay home until you’ve been fever-free for 24 hours without fever-reducing medications.  Do not go back to work with a fever.  A temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) is a fever.

Those at highest risk – the elderly, pregnant women, infants, or those with other health conditions.  Those who show flu symptoms should contact their physician immediately to get the most effective treatment.  Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches, and fatigue.

Flu Season Guidance for Supervisors and Managers

Based on previous recommendations of the California Department of Public Health on how to keep the workplace safe:

• Employees should stay home or go home when they are sick with influenza symptoms. Staff with symptoms of influenza (fever and cough, sore throat, or runny nose) should stay home until they are fever-free for 24 hours without using fever-reducing medications. Employees should not come back to work with a fever.

• Review your leave policies. Work with your personnel office if you have questions.

• If you have increasing absenteeism due to employees home sick with influenza symptoms, protect remaining employees against the spread of influenza by limiting meetings and conferences. Instead of face-to-face meetings and conferences, consider using email, telework, web- and teleconferences.

• Maintain a supply of face tissues and access to hand washing facilities or hand hygiene products (alcohol-based hand sanitizer), and make these available throughout the workplace.

• Place disinfectant wipes in commonly used places. Encourage employees to disinfect commonly touched hard surfaces in the workplace, such as work stations, counter tops, and door knobs.

• Post signs informing people to “cover their cough” and wash their hands in facility locations such as entrances, visitation rooms, notice boards, conference rooms, break rooms, and restrooms, where feasible and appropriate. You can get examples of these posters in English and other languages from the CDPH website.

Flu Season Guidance for Personnel Offices and Employee Relations Officers

Departments should manage sick employees in the same manner as with other illnesses by encouraging them to stay home or go home if they show signs of influenza symptoms. Departments should review the provisions for leave usage, return to work, and medical verification in the appropriate collective bargaining agreements.

The following types of leave are available for employees to use while off work due to illness.

• Sick Leave

• Vacation

• Annual Leave

• Compensating Time Off

• Personal Leave Program

• Voluntary Personal Leave Program

• Holiday Credit

• Bank or self-directed Furlough Hours

• Catastrophic Leave

• Non-Industrial Disability Insurance

• State Disability Insurance

• Family Medical Leave Act

• California Family Rights Act

Read CalHR’s guidance on the use of the above leave benefits.

For employees with no leave balances or who have exhausted their leave balances, departments are reminded that they have the discretion to set up catastrophic leave banks for their employees.

To minimize the impact on operations, departments may consider the following options to assist employees who are off work due to their own illness or a family member’s illness but are still able to perform work duties:

• Telework

• Alternate work schedules

• Flextime (refer to the collective bargaining agreements for represented employees)

Personnel liaison staff with questions about this guidance should contact our Personnel Services Branch.