It’s late winter, and that means cold and flu season is upon us. On any day in the month of March, you or a member of your team may come down with a sore throat or fever that puts someone out of commission and throws a wrench into your operation. For many PROs who operate with small staffs, a few missed days due to illness can be a big deal.
But don’t panic. You can take steps to lessen the blow if one or more people go down and have to call in sick. An illness-induced worker shortage doesn’t mean you have to abandoned customers in need of essential services or close up shop for a few days, putting your company at risk of losing critical revenue.
And if currently everyone is healthy and at work, this is a great time to review your procedures for handling sick day short staffing. Here are eight suggestions to help you cope with the cold and flu season and not compound all that feeling bad with bad feelings from your crew and customers:
An ounce of prevention:
Think about the impact of illness on your business before you or other key workers call in sick. Start a wellness program that encourages eating right, regular exercise, plenty of rest and preventive health care. Contact a local clinic and have a nurse practitioner talk to your team about these topics and make suggestions to reduce the likelihood that illness will spread through your ranks. This might include stressing germ-fighting sanitary habits in the office, taking multivitamins and extending good cleanliness habits out into the field. Because sanitation is always top-of-mind for PROs, your crew has a head start on preventing the spread of illness.
Act fast at the first sign of sickness:
When you feel that throbbing headache indicating a sinus infection or that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach that signals a flu bug, get in to see a medical professional right away. Over-the-counter and prescription medications can often shorten the duration of an illness and reduce the time you’re out of commission. Share that same advice with your crew. Paying for a visit to a walk-in clinic for a sick employee may reap dividends in the long run if you lose them for only a day instead of three. Health care is expensive, but so is trying to cover for a lost person with overtime or the potential of losing clients due to service interruptions.
Promote flexible scheduling:
If you allow employees to flex their work time around family and other important obligations all year long, they will likely be more open to the idea of pitching in with long hours to help cover for you or someone else who falls ill. Promote the concept of teamwork: You are a team, and you give each other a hand when an emergency strikes — no questions asked. Flexible scheduling can buy goodwill and that goodwill, can be cashed in for help during times when you are shorthanded due to illness.
Cross-train everyone:
Just like you are prepared to jump on a truck and set up and service restrooms when necessary, the technician on your truck should be able to work in the warehouse, and the yard person should be able to answer the phones. Sure, not all office workers will be able to drive a truck, and not all drivers will be able to balance the books. But to the extent you can, cross-training every employee to perform another aspect of the work in your company can help give you options when someone goes down sick. Make cross-training a part of job descriptions, and make sure each employee shadows another regularly to stay up to speed on a different aspect of your operation. Then when one gets sick, another is ready to step in and take care of business.
Prioritize your service to customers:
You want to give every customer the solid service they expect. However when you or others are down with illness, you might have to make concessions to your normal top-notch service routine. Make a list of regular customers and note those who are typically flexible and understanding, those who are the most loyal to your company, those who are the most demanding and those who you wouldn’t mind losing if the workload was suddenly too much for you and your staff to handle.
Put customers who are indispensable — for instance the huge construction site that accounts for 50 restrooms — on the top of the list. Also rank the most demanding, but critically important, customers up high. I know, this means you might have to call some of your favorite and most loyal customers and ask them to understand delays because of illness, and that’s not fair to them. But being caught shorthanded sometimes requires drastic measures.
Have a fill-in ready:
Many restroom companies are owned and operated by families. So there is probably a logical person sitting on the sidelines who could be called in on short notice for a few days. That might be a recently retired family member or former employee. Or it could be a friend or an acquaintance who works part time or seasonally and would be willing and available to help out on occasion. Create a list of at least a few of these candidates and train them (with pay) to fill in for sick or vacationing workers. And offer them enough money to make it worth their while to drop other things to come and work for you intermittently.
Designate a No. 2:
Look at every member of your team. Is there someone who can always be relied on to get the job done and do it well? If so, it might be time to promote that person into a management position to back you up. Open that person to more of the company records and decision-making. Gradually give him or her more responsibility to handle the day-to-day operations with the goal that this person will be capable of steering the ship when you are away from the helm. And because you have been cross-training everyone else, your company won’t miss a beat when you or somebody else comes down with a 24-hour bug.
Set up a home office:
When you’re sick, you may not want to come to the office, but you might be able to run things while sitting at home in your pajamas. You may want to set up a dedicated home office for your business, even if it’s just a corner of the basement between the water heater and the furnace. Or you may just want a capable laptop computer you can work on from bed. While it doesn’t have to look as nice as your regular office, it should have all the same technology so you can respond to customers and your crew. That means a computer loaded with the software you need, a fast and reliable internet connection, and access to your work email account and a cloud account so you can easily transfer large amounts of data back and forth to your office staff and technicians.
LAY IT ON THE TABLE
If sickness is affecting the quality and timeliness of your service, don’t be afraid to explain the situation to your customers and ask for their patience. They’ve probably been in the same position as business owners or managers, and chances are they will understand.
But it’s better still to implement some of these measures to make sure you won’t be caught unprepared in the future when you or someone on your team invariably comes down with an illness and is out of commission for a few days or a week. And even if you are blessed with good health throughout the year, these tips will improve the efficiency of your portable sanitation operation in many ways. To your health!
