Firms scramble to deal with flu

Small businesses particularly hard hit as employees fall sick

A particularly virulent flu season is leaving Toronto businesses scrambling to deal with employees who are off the job sick.

Amanda Evans, division director at the staffing agency OfficeTeam, estimated requests for temporary workers to cover sick leave had increased 10 to 15 per cent in the past six weeks.

“It’s been floating around quite a bit, starting mid- to late-November, very heavy throughout December, and we’re noticing it even now with people returning from holidays,” said Evans. “There’s definitely been a noticeable increase.”

Toronto Public Health confirmed 1,180 flu cases between Sept. 1, 2012, and Jan. 15, 2013 — a spike over a five-year average of 318 cases for the same time period. There have been 68 institutional outbreaks, compared to a five-year average of 16. Those figures exclude 2009/2010, when H1N1, or swine flu, was pandemic.

Janet Hasenauer, vice-president of the construction firm RoofPro Plus, said staff are falling sick “like flies all over the place.” “It has a ripple effect. One person comes down with it and. . . it just ripples through all the different crews,” said Hasenauer, who coowns the company of about 25 employees. Hasenauer said it’s particularly difficult to manage because companies have fewer workers now, as they try to keep costs down. “We’ve had to be very competitive and lower pricing, and certainly our profit margins have taken a hit, so as a result we’re trying to be lean machines as well,” she said. According to Toronto Public Health, the first week of January “represented the highest (flu) activ- ity in a single week so far this season.” Mylene Beatty, office administrator at Kermodei Construction, said they’re juggling people between crews to make up for workers who are out sick. “More and more people are being affected by it,” said Beatty, whose Scarborough-based company employs about 30 people. “You have to make arrangements for others to compensate for those who aren’t around.” Private-sector employees are less likely to take time off for sickness than government workers, according to a report by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Federal government employees took the most time off, at 15.2 days a year, while those working for private businesses with fewer than 20 staff took the least, just 6.7 days.

Plamen Petkov, CFIB’s Ontario director, said seasonal flu hits small businesses especially hard.

“If you have two or three employees, and one or two call in sick, the impact on the business and day-today operations is obviously enormous,” said Petkov. “(It) results in slower productivity and could impact the bottom line.”

South of the border, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the flu reached epidemic proportions last week.