Accommodating the needs of your employees and creating a comfortable working environment for them is the key to creating a well-oiled team that gets results. That’s not too difficult to do for the majority of employees, but if you hire somebody with a long-term health condition, you’ll face a few more challenges. One option is to avoid hiring people with health conditions in the first place, but that means passing up on great employees and choosing somebody who might not be as good. If you want the best possible people working for you, sometimes you’ve got to put a bit of extra work in to accommodate them. Here’s how to deal with an employee with a long-term health condition.
Medical Equipment
If they have a condition which means they need some kind of medical equipment around, you should make it as easy as possible for them by either providing yourself where necessary or making sure that they have somewhere to store and use it. For example, if one of your employees has a heart condition, consider having a defibrillator installed in the office, just in case of emergencies. If you’ve got an employee that has diabetes, make sure that they always have a private place where they can inject insulin if they need to. These small changes aren’t much to you, but they make a huge difference to your employees.
Have A Contingency
When you’ve got people with health conditions working for you, there is always the chance that they will have to take long periods off work if their condition worsens in any way. Planning for that eventuality ensures that it doesn’t disrupt the flow of work if and when it happens. You could consider hiring a temp to do the job for them for a while, but it’s always better to get people from inside the company to help out. Look at the employee’s daily tasks and work out how you can divide them up between other members of staff. You may have to offer people a small bonus in their pay packet if they’re taking on extra work but most of the time, people will be happy to help out a colleague.
Provide Health Insurance
If that person is struggling to pay for their health care costs, they may start looking for jobs elsewhere that offer a better insurance package. That means you’re going to lose a good person which will impact your business. To avoid that, you should offer comprehensive health insurance that covers the majority, if not all, of their health care costs. It ensures that they are always in good health and shows them that you’re committed to looking after your employees which is always a good morale booster.
Flexible Working Hours
Some health conditions require regular trips to the doctor or perhaps make it difficult for people to work long hours. You can make things a lot easier for them by making their working hours flexible so they can work when they feel up to it and sometimes work from home if they need to. This makes them far less likely to take whole days off work because of their health.
Just because somebody has a serious medical condition, that doesn’t mean they aren’t a valuable employee, so always make sure you do everything you can to accommodate them.
