To think free flu jabs for NHS admin staff is ridiculous??

[thisisjustridiculous]

My SIL is admin staff in the NHS, she has no patient contact and no real contact with medical staff, beyond half an hour a week.

She’s just got a free flu jab! AIBU to think this is disgusting? It must cost the NHS so much, admin staff should have to pay. I agree that frontline staff should get it for free to protect the vulnerable but admin staff shouldn’t.

I’ve worked for a Local Authority in the past, no contact with customers, and was offered a flu jab. I think they invest apx £10 per jab, to avoid the much higher cost of staff being off sick.

The fact that the NHS offer this out to their admin staff isn’t a generosity on their part…their will have been some number crunching in the background and a conclusion that it’s more cost effective to offer it than save on not offering it.

I think you are picking the wrong battle here, as it’s not an outright freebie, it benefits the employer. As another example of something that is unfair, where I live there is a bus service to the hospital that during Covid was offered free of charge to NHS workers as they were ‘heroes’, then when it went to £1 each way a huge fuss was made about how it’s unfair to charge them due to the job they do. Yet…from the same park and ride, if someone working in retail/office gets a bus to the city centre they pay £6 return, so 3x as much as the commute cost of the NHS worker…and quite often NHS workers are on higher salaries!

There is also the ‘blue light card’. Why are people who work for the NHS (in any role) and certain other employers getting discounts in so many places? Some of these people are on over £100k a year….why are they getting 10% off their groceries?

All of these discounts are being subsidised by the rest of use paying more to fund it!

£15 isn’t the subsidised rate. The cost per person is pennies and the NHS buys in massive volumes. Pharmacies put a very big mark up on it.

Which stats?

The cost to a business is measured both in cost of sick leave (not measured in minutes) and risk of having key people absent and the knock on effect of those people being absent. Its far more than just the individual absence costs.

My organisation is pretty hard nosed and data driven - famously so. The numbers for us are a no brainer - we cover flu jabs via expenses for all staff. Not because our people cannot afford the jab but because making it chargeable and sending out the mass mail to remind people of this encourages people to take it up.

Unfortunately I suspect it’s the latter. As with so many people these days.

NHS staff can pop over to the OH department and have it done too (was my experience anyway)

You are being about as unreasonable as its possible to be.

I was a cook in a care home years ago, never had any resident interaction yet we still got the jab when the Dr came. NHS funded. It costs more to have staff off sick for a week then it does to provide the jab

My point exactly

You surely grasp that sick pay for flu would cost significantly more right? Considering even minimum wage is almost £13 an hour, the flu jab would probably cost a lot less than £15 for the NHS yet most people with flu would likely take a week off, which would be a hell of a lot more than £15. Never mind that if they come in with flu before they get too ill, they take out multiple people. So not getting a flu jab could cost thousands in sick pay and lost work hours.

It seems like you genuinely haven't considered the logic if its just about cost.

I can only speak for myself and as we all know anecdote is not data, but the one time I had flu i was off work for two weeks as it wiped me out. I have had a flu jab every year for the past 16 years and the worst side effect was a sore red arm at the injection site when i had a reaction to that year's vaccine. A couple of paracetemol and I just carried on working. My whole team (14 of us) had the flu jab every year for 12 years and not one was off for even a single day due to side effects. Give me a sore arm any day compared to being bed ridden and aching all over with a raging temperature due to having flu. And then there's that other side effect, protecting others...

You hate your SIL don’t you. Otherwise this post makes absolutely no sense

I’ve worked in the NHS for 20 years. I’m clinical, but I can assure you we very much need the admin staff not to go off with flu!

I can assure you medical secretaries, medical records and appointment staff are essential.

Have you found it impossible to access care?

I usually have a bad reaction to flu jabs and the covd jab, but it's one to three days off/working from home compared to two to three weeks off recovering from flu/covid and the inevitable asthma attack and chest infection.

So admin staff should be forced to have the jab but pay for it themselves? Do you realise that those same admin staff are paid peanuts barely more than minimum wage, and when people talk about "perks" of a job there just aren't any for them?

No Christmas parties, certainly no bonuses, not even free tea and coffee, no free health or medical insurance. Take any one of those job benefits they don't get and it comes to an awful lot more than the cost of an annual flu jab!

PP saying the cost of cover for staff off sick - you'll be lucky! Staffing has been cut to the bone and most places don't bring in agency staff to cover admin, the existing over-worked staff just have to suck it up.

Hospitals are full of old people, and old people are at risk of dying from the flu. When I worked in a hospital, we all lined up and were done bang bang bang, a bit like in school, so it cost much less than if we each booked an appointment. The wholesale cost of the vaccine is £8, but if they buy by the thousand, it will fall a lot, maybe to a fiver, and they will also have less wastage. Put that against an old person already weak in a hospital getting flu and blocking the bed for a week the cost is nothing, I'd make it mandatory for healthcare workers.

Weird way of saying you can't stand your SIL but ok.

NHS admin staff are already badly paid. Why should they be penalised further because of who their employer is?

Don't be ridiculous. It's difficult to access care in the NHS because it's underfunded. That is not the fault of the admin staff.

Lots lf big employers pay for their employees to have a flu jab @thisisjustridiculous I think theyre right to offer jabs to all their staff.

Less that £5pp from what I can see.

There will have been a cost benefit analysis weighing up the cost of the jab to the NHS vs the cost of replacing admin staff if they are off sick, or the amount of money wasted when admin staff are off sick. The latter obviously came out at more than £15 per staff member. You can’t just look at the cost in isolation, you have to look at the potential savings caused by the staff having the jab.

This is what I do for a living weighing the cost of a new drug on prescription against the potential savings to the patient and the NHS (or equivalent in other countries) from the patient taking that drug.

Needs it

Public sector employees in the UK take more sick leave than private sector workers, with an absence rate of 2.9% (averaging around 13.3 days per worker per year) compared to 1.7% in the private sector (averaging around 9.1 days per worker per year)

I had to get vaccinations every health place I worked at that was even a 30 years ago. it's nothing new. It's part of an employment requirement that's why it's paid for by their employer

This. It’s hard enough navigating NHS at times, I’d much rather admin staff get the jab and lessen the chance of absences.

I'd give it for free to absolutely everyone who was prepared to take it. Herd immunity is a great thing when you're living in a society with vulnerable and immune compromised people.