Posted on: Friday, January 2, 2004

Flu takes toll on business planning

By Michael L. Diamond
Asbury Park (N.J.) Press

As chief executive officer of AVC Global Services in Eatontown, N.J., Trev Blackman can only cross his fingers once flu season rolls around.

His telecommunications company only has 20 employees and he's seen what happens when even one of them, working on deadline, calls in sick.

"The last thing you want is you can't meet a customer's schedule because an employee is sick," Blackman said.

With the flu season already fierce this year, many companies soon could find themselves in that predicament. And if the sheer variety of sick-time policies is an indication, they have yet to settle on a method to handle it.

The benefit isn't universal. A quarter of companies don't offer any paid sick time at all, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

And those that do find employees on average take between five and six sick days a year. The cost: About 2 percent of a company's total payroll, according to a study by the consulting firm Mercer.

The expense can be seen if not completely quantified at AVC Global Services, which gives employees three days of paid sick time a year.

Blackman said he remembers one recent episode when an employee working on a key project got sick, forcing Blackman to call on other busy employees to pitch in as the project's deadline neared.

"We have people who can move from other assignments," Blackman said. "Obviously, there is some expense, but it's not viewed in that light. (It's) more from the perspective that we have to get the project completed, and we'd take more of a hit not getting it completed."

Other small businesses are in a similar position. Gary Huhn, president of Roben Manufacturing Inc. in Lakewood, N.J., said sick time for his 15 employees working on the shop floor accumulates gradually. After 15 years, employees get five paid sick days off a year.

Huhn said he's not bound by the company handbook; employees who are sick likely will be paid for time off. But unexpected absences can strain the operation.

"Most of the people we have are multitalented," Huhn said. "If they weren't multitalented, I'd have a major problem."

The flu in particular can hammer a workforce. It is spread through the air and can be contracted simply from an infected co-worker's cough or sneeze, said Leslie Sojka, an internist on the staff of CentraState Medical Center in Freehold Township, N.J.

"If you're sick with a flu-like illness, you shouldn't go to work," said Sojka, adding that he didn't take any chances of seeing his staff decimated by the flu. "We all get the vaccine."

One increasingly popular idea to manage sick days: A paid time-off plan that combines sick days with vacation and personal days. An employee no longer has to feign an illness the morning of a child's school play, and employers get at least a day or two of notice, experts said.

Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton has taken it a step further. Several years ago, company officials decided to give their salaried employees unlimited sick time, said Jessica Kozak, a human resources associate.

It's a policy experts said is easier with white-collar workers who can make up the time lost from home or over the weekend.

But Kozak said it has subtly changed workers' attitudes about sick days.

"When you as a company say you have five sick days a year, people say, 'That's my time, I'm using it,' " Kozak said.