Your employees learn and know all the little details about their roles in your workplace.

Well, preventing the spread of the cold and flu is no different. You have a number of small actions to take (or not take) to prevent their spread.

So, take a look at some of the common mistakes companies make when trying to stymie the cold and flu:

1. Wash Your Hands When You First Get to the Office

Do you have kids? They routinely bring home all sorts of diseases from school. And you could haul those right to work.

Plus, if you carpool or ride crowded public transport, you’ve just exposed yourself to a myriad of people who could have the cold or flu too.

So, when you first get to the office, wash your hands. You have no idea how many disease-causing agents you might first bring in.

2. Trying to Power Through

Everyone loves to work hard. And when you or your employees have a disease, they may wear it as a badge of honor to work right through it.

Encourage your employees to rest when sick because truly, failing to rest only catches up with them in the long-term, which actually costs them (and you) more productivity.

If they have a light cold and feel like they can still work, let them work from home.

An Airtasker study reports that, while employees take more breaks when at home, they actually get 10 more minutes of work done daily and 1.4 days more done monthly.

3. Don’t Underestimate the Resilience of Viruses

Viruses are tough and good at their jobs. View them like your top competitor in your industry.

When you vomit, you can expel 1 billion virus particles. But, it only takes 10 to cause an infection.

After recovering from an illness, you might feel well. But, you can still carry viruses for up to two weeks after.

That’s exactly the case with norovirus, for example.

So whatever personal hygiene routine your employees have when well, they need to intensify it and not miss a step in the aftermath of an illness.

4. Poor Hygiene Practices at Your Office

Employees will take off of work if your office doesn’t implement effective hygiene practices – even if they’re feeling well.

That means you need to get their feedback on your hygiene practices. What your employees want is usually quite simple, and not a big change or expense for your office.

Increase availability of hand sanitizer. Pristine restrooms.

So, involve your employees in your office’s hygiene. Everyone will be well more often. And your bottom line will thank you for it.

That’s all there is to it. Making hygiene a priority isn’t hard. And it doesn’t take a lot of work.

Now you know the top mistakes to watch for, and the simple solutions for them.