Audio clip
John Sorrow
For a couple of months, the flu was a fact of life for the employees of Cutting Edge Packaging Solutions in Chattanooga.
This influenza season, each of the five workers at the small business came down with the virus.
“We took turns,” said owner Connie Edge, who tried to make sure her employees stayed home when they got sick. “If it’s just a cold, sometimes you can work through that, but if they really have the flu we don’t want them in here spreading it.”
Particularly for small businesses, seasonal illnesses such as the flu and allergies can batter a company’s productivity, if not hindering actual production then increasing the workload for still-healthy employees.
“It makes the other people have to pick up the work,” Ms. Edge said. “You know when someone is not feeling well, they’re not going to work as well.”
This year’s flu season finally is slowing down, with just 355 new cases of influenza-like illness reported in the week that ended March 8, compared to 839 in the week that ended Feb. 23, according to the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department.
But Margaret Zylstra, the department’s epidemiology manager, said that doesn’t mean area residents can breathe easy just yet.
“Even though it looks like that flu is on the decline, there are still certainly people that can get the flu even now,” she said. “It’s not completely done; even into April we still get flu cases.”
TOUGHING IT OUT
Many employees here said they simply tough it out through colds and other minor ailments — but some can’t stay away from work even when serious illness strikes.
Freelance support technician Jan Myers worked on a job for Chattanooga-based dBcq Technologies Inc. this winter when all 20 of her freelancing co-workers came down with the flu.
Everyone kept working, she said.
At the corporate multimedia event, technical support for lighting, sound and PowerPoint presentations was necessary and “there wasn’t anybody else to do your job,” she said.
“When there’s thousands of dollars at stake, you just keep working,” she said.
Stan Brodka, director of sales at Thinking Media on Frazier Avenue, said he doesn’t care how sick he is, because, “I can suck it up. I can play hurt.”
Dr. Bess Ingram, an internal medicine specialist at Premier Health Care in Chattanooga, said many employees today are determined to be on the job, even if it’s not in their best interest or that of their co-workers.
“I have to force my patients to stay home, (saying) ‘No, you are contagious. You cannot go to work,’” she said. “That’s why it’s spreading. Because people are continuing to go to work when they’re ill. They feel like they can’t take off.”
When an employee is suffering, his or her performance suffers, too, Dr. Ingram said.
“They can’t concentrate, they can’t focus, there tends to be a lot more errors,” she said. “It would benefit the employer to send these people home and give them the appropriate time to heal.”
Marcellus Barnes, youth pastor at Mount Canaan Baptist Church in East Chattanooga, said he has flexible hours.
“I’m usually not around anybody during the day, so I’ll just go (to work) as long as I’m not feeling terrible,” he said.
LARGE-COMPANY IMPACT
Even large companies can feel the strain when a chunk of their work force is under the weather.
Mary Thompson, spokeswoman for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, said productivity is affected anytime a large percentage of employees are stricken with flu or seasonal allergies.
“Even when employees who are sick report to work, their individual performances are compromised by their symptoms,” she said.
BlueCross employs 3,671 people in Chattanooga.
John Sorrow, Mid-South region president for CIGNA, said the insurance company always plans for an uptick in workplace absences during the flu season.
But this year, the company experienced fewer absences than expected, which Mr. Sorrow attributed to its wellness programs and free flu shots. Most employees took advantage of the vaccines this year, he said.
“We think this is some evidence that the things we’re doing are beneficial in improving the health of our employees,” he said.
Health care reporter Emily Bregel has worked at the Chattanooga Times Free Press since July 2006. She previously covered banking and wrote for the Life section. Emily, a native of Baltimore, Md., earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Columbia University. She received a first-place award for feature writing from the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists’ Golden Press Card Contest for a 2009 article about a boy with a congenital heart defect. She ...
