Workplace Preparedness Plan for Epidemics

What is a workplace epidemic plan for?

If a third of a department goes home with a fever within a week in winter, everything done at that point is done in a hurry: no one knows who will return when, the canteen arrangements are argued over, and each shift supervisor sets their own rule. A workplace epidemic plan lets you take these decisions in a calm period, together with the workplace physician, the OHS specialist and department managers. A plan prepared for seasonal flu can also be used as the workplace’s pandemic plan in a wider outbreak. The plan is not a medical protocol; it is a business plan setting out how the workplace will keep working during illness and how the likelihood of workers infecting each other will be reduced.

The legal framework has three foundations. Art. 10 of Law No. 6331 on Occupational Health and Safety requires the employer to assess the risks workers may be exposed to; Art. 11 requires the employer to be prepared for emergencies. Art. 9 of the Regulation on the Duties, Powers, Responsibilities and Training of Workplace Physicians and Other Health Personnel also gives the workplace physician the duty of carrying out prevention of spread and immunisation work for the control of communicable diseases. So the soundest approach is to link epidemic preparedness to your existing risk assessment and emergency plan rather than inventing a new file.

For healthcare, laboratory or food businesses that work with biological agents by the nature of the work, the Regulation on the Prevention of Risks of Exposure to Biological Agents also applies; we covered this in our article on biological agents and risk groups. This article focuses on the community outbreak scenario that concerns every workplace.

Components of the plan and who is responsible

Start the plan with a one-page summary table. Each row should have an owner and a concrete output:

The “trigger criteria” row in the table is forgotten in most plans. Write down in advance when the plan will be activated: for example, a regional alert from the health authority, consecutive respiratory complaints in one department within the same week, or absenteeism rising markedly above its usual level. Set the criterion using your workplace’s own absence data.

Case reporting and separating the sick worker

The most effective thing a workplace can do in an outbreak is to ensure a sick worker does not stay in the production area. Isolating a sick worker does not mean medical quarantine at the workplace; it means keeping the worker separate from others until they go home or to a health facility. For this, the flow must be simple and known to everyone:

1. Symptoms starting at home: A worker who wakes up with a fever, cough or fatigue informs their supervisor before coming to work. A phone call or message to the supervisor should be enough; do not force the worker to come in to ask whether they “should get a sick note”.
2. Symptoms starting at work: The worker informs their supervisor and the health unit. Until health personnel assess them, the worker waits in a pre-designated, ventilated separation area away from crowds.
3. Sending home and referral: The physician or nurse decides whether the worker is referred home or to a health facility. How they will travel, instead of by public transport or the company shuttle, is planned in advance.
4. Cleaning the area in contact: The desk, control panel and shared items used by the worker are cleaned.
5. Records: The health unit keeps the record; the manager is told only until what date the worker cannot work.

A large room is not needed for the separation area; a small room with a door that closes and a window that opens, containing a chair, tissues, hand sanitiser and a waste bin, is enough. What matters is that this room is not used as a meeting room during the outbreak.

Arranging common areas during a communicable disease outbreak

A communicable disease spreads easily at the workplace, especially in common areas. It is not always possible to change the distance between workers on a production line, but areas outside the line can be arranged:

• Canteen: Stagger breaks by department, make sure people sitting at the same table are from the same team, shorten the queue at the serving line.
• Staff shuttles: Window ventilation in the vehicle and grouping the same team in the same vehicle narrow the chain of transmission compared with mixed seating.
• Changing rooms: Prevent incoming and outgoing groups from being in the changing room at the same time at shift change.
• Meetings and training: Turn crowded meetings into short stand-up meetings or online calls. Training that the legislation requires to be face to face should be split into small groups rather than postponed.
• Ventilation: Check that the fresh air supply is working in enclosed spaces; ask the technical team for the maintenance record of the mechanical system.
• Hygiene points: Have hand-washing or hand sanitiser points at entrances, the canteen and toilet exits, and keep them constantly filled.

If you plan to use remote working as a temporary option for desk-based workers, you can find the OHS side of home working in our article on home and remote working.

Business continuity: back up critical roles in an outbreak

The main effect of an outbreak on the business is the simultaneous absence of particular people. Plan business continuity before the outbreak in this order:

1. List critical roles. Roles that stop production or safety if they stop: boiler room operator, forklift operator, the person giving quality approval, maintenance electrician, dispatch planner.
2. Assign at least one back-up for each role. The back-up must have the training and, if necessary, the certificate to do the job. A job requiring a vocational training certificate cannot be given even “temporarily” to someone without one.
3. Record cross-training. Write down the date and duration of the back-up doing the job under supervision.
4. Count the emergency teams. The number of first aiders is one per 20 workers in less hazardous, one per 15 in hazardous and one per 10 in very hazardous workplaces. The Regulation on Emergencies also requires shift patterns to be taken into account when designating support staff and their back-ups (Art. 11/8). In an outbreak, some of these teams may be depleted at the same time; keep the back-up list by shift.
5. Include external services. Ask the catering, cleaning and shuttle companies for their own back-up plans.

We explained how emergency teams are set up in our guide to the emergency plan and support staff.

The coordinating role of the workplace physician

The workplace physician is the medical link in the decision chain of the epidemic plan. The physician’s typical duties in this process are:

• Writing the symptom reporting and separation flow, and determining the capacity of the health unit.
• Recommending an immunisation programme to the employer for vaccine-preventable diseases such as seasonal flu; for details, see our article on the workplace vaccination programme.
• Recommending temporary job adaptations for workers with chronic illnesses, pregnant workers or older workers. Our article on workers with chronic illnesses provides guidance for these workers.
• Assessing the worker’s fitness for their job on return after illness; carrying out a return-to-work examination after repeated absences if the worker requests it.
• Monitoring absence data and advising the employer on activating or closing the plan.
• Giving workers short briefings on hygiene, cough and sneeze etiquette and the importance of staying home when ill.

The physician’s recommendations are put into practice with the employer’s approval; having decisions in writing makes it easier to assess what worked after the outbreak.

Keeping the plan alive: tabletop exercises

It is not possible to test an epidemic plan on site like a fire drill, but a one-hour tabletop exercise quickly reveals gaps. An example scenario: “On Monday morning six people from the packaging department called in with a fever, one of the two forklift operators is absent, and the night shift’s first aider is ill.” Participants open the plan and apply each step in turn; they are asked whom to call, who the back-up is, how the shuttle will be arranged and from whom the announcement will come. Every question without an answer is added to the plan.

Review the plan once a year, before the outbreak season begins, and add it to your annual tasks in the OHS calendar tool. As Bursa Sistemer, we plan epidemic preparedness for businesses in Bursa and neighbouring provinces within our workplace physician service, and link team back-ups to the emergency plan work.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an epidemic plan legally mandatory?

Under Arts. 10 and 11 of Law No. 6331, the employer is obliged to assess risks and to be prepared for emergencies. Preparing epidemic preparedness as an annex or section linked to these two documents is a practical way of documenting the obligation.

Who decides to send a sick worker home?

The workplace physician, or health personnel under the physician’s direction, makes the decision; the supervisor’s task is to direct the worker to the separation area and inform the health unit. The reason for the decision is kept in the health record.

Is the manager told the name of the worker’s illness?

No. Health information is confidential; the manager is told only until what date the worker cannot work or with what restriction they can work.

Can mandatory OHS training be postponed during an outbreak?

Unless the Ministry makes a separate arrangement, the training periods in the legislation are not automatically extended because of an outbreak. Planning training that must be delivered face to face in small groups, in a ventilated room and in short sessions is a safer solution.