How to Plan an Onsite Flu Clinic for Your Office
Every year the flu season takes a toll on employee health, company productivity, and on total health care costs. The components of the flu vaccine change each year, making an annual flu shot a necessity.
Need a way to make sure your employees stay healthy during the dreadful flu season? Workplace flu shot clinics are an easy, cost-effective way to protect your employees from the flu.
Schedule the Clinic
Consider your timing, cost, quality of care, and customer support when looking for a perfect clinic fit for your business. Every nurse sent out to onsite flu shot clinics will be trained in flu vaccination. Once onsite, they can make the clinic as simple as possible.
Also consider the timing of when you’ll hold your flu shot clinic.
The onsite flu clinic times should work easily into your employee’s work day. A lot of companies offer it over lunch breaks or have a flexible day so that employees don’t have a reason not to attend.
The whole point of offering an onsite flu shot clinic is to make sure your employees receive a flu shot. Ensure that they don’t need to wait in long lines and that the times offered are easily available for employees. Forbes suggests creating specific time slots to be vaccinated if scheduling the clinic for a large company.
Promote the Clinic
Once you’ve decided on a clinic that will be best suited for your business and your employees, make sure your team knows about it.
Start early in promoting your onsite flu clinic. Use various methods and outlets to raise awareness of the clinic so that your employees see the information:
- Send out email blasts and add the scheduled times in company newsletters.
- Even in the age of social media, fliers around the office can catch attention. Hang the fliers in communal areas to attract the most eyes.
- Employees will also have questions about the clinic. Provide handouts to guarantee that the information is easily accessible.
If you’re doing time slots, make the process of signing up for the time slots as easy as possible to ensure the largest number of employees will attend the clinic. Stress the ease and convenience of going to the onsite flu clinic for a shot instead of trying to get one on a day off or taking off time to see a physician.
An employer doesn’t like it when people are out sick with the flu. Well, the employee also wants to avoid using their sick days because of an annoying virus.
Educate your employees on the importance of getting a flu shot. Make sure they’re aware that it’s not only their wellbeing they’re protecting, but those around them as well. Use the free resources from organizations like WHO and the CDC to provide your employees with current and accurate information.
Before the clinic date, the nurses can also help with this information. Ask for resources to help stress the importance of getting a flu shot.
Host Your Onsite Clinic
Now that you’ve planned and scheduled your corporate onsite flu shot clinic it’s time to host it!
Keep in contact with the health clinic and nurses who are helping with your flu clinic. Ask them what they need from you and how you should set up the space for the flu shot clinic. Create a simple check list to ensure everything runs smoothly the day of the clinic.
Often times, trash bins, pens and any form of documentation or consent forms will also be needed for the event. Double check which small items need to be provided before the clinic begins.
On the day of your onsite flu clinic make certain that the designated room for the clinic is clean, set up, and ready before the nurses arrive. Try to stay available the entire day in case something comes up and the nurses need you for anything.
When the clinic is over thank everyone for their participation. It also could help to have a short survey for those who participated. It will let you know how they felt and provide you with feedback to keep in mind when thinking about hosting the next year’s clinic.
Record the Outcome
Ideally your onsite flu shot clinic had a high attendance and you’re able to see that it’s had a positive outcome. Vaccinated employees typically have fewer healthcare visits, fewer lost work days, and more productive work days than their non-vaccinated counterparts.
Keep track of the number of sick days employees are taking during flu season and the amount of trips they take to a doctor’s office.
Benefits
Company hosted onsite flu shot clinics are a great way to make getting the flu shot convenient for your employees. With a healthier workforce, you’ll be facing reduced healthcare-related costs once flu season hits. That season should be filled with less risk of inner-office flu after the clinic.
The best way to keep the flu from holding back your office is to arm them with protection against it.
Do you have any other questions about onsite flu clinics? Wondering how to keep your business free of the virus during flu season? Passport Health can help! Give us a call at for more information.
Written for Passport Health by Brianna Malotke. Brianna is a freelance writer and costume designer located in Illinois. She’s an avid coffee drinker and enjoys researching new topics for writing.
