OR in Real Life: Free Flu Vaccination
The company where I work recently announced that all employees are entitled to free flu vaccination. Good news. I won't be taking advantage of it though because I already had my shot last month.:( But that's beside the point of this blog.
We are going into another practical application of OR.
Suppose there are 1000 employees and each shot costs P500, then the total expense would be P500k, which is A LOT of money. (I know for a fact that there are more than 1k employees, and MY flu shot was P1500). Before any company decides to spend that much on an ad hoc benefit, it must have done some analysis, no?*. What is the benefit of giving everyone free flu shots? To minimize the number of people getting sick, for sure. But does it justify the total amount to be spent? We can look at historical data and see how many lost days there were due to flu. This can then be equated to lost productivity (=money). If total cost of the free flu shots < total cost due to sick days, then the program would have positive ROI. This is a simplified analysis, of course. Other items to consider are participation rate, effectivity of the shots, etc.
Aside from the free flu shots for employees, dependents can get the shots for P480. If this is a subsidized price, then the total program cost will increase but the total effectivity could also increase since the employees' co-workers and family members are already immune, i.e. probability of getting sick is reduced.
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**OR, maybe somebody in HR just decided that this would be a nice thing to do... :)
We are going into another practical application of OR.
Suppose there are 1000 employees and each shot costs P500, then the total expense would be P500k, which is A LOT of money. (I know for a fact that there are more than 1k employees, and MY flu shot was P1500). Before any company decides to spend that much on an ad hoc benefit, it must have done some analysis, no?*. What is the benefit of giving everyone free flu shots? To minimize the number of people getting sick, for sure. But does it justify the total amount to be spent? We can look at historical data and see how many lost days there were due to flu. This can then be equated to lost productivity (=money). If total cost of the free flu shots < total cost due to sick days, then the program would have positive ROI. This is a simplified analysis, of course. Other items to consider are participation rate, effectivity of the shots, etc.
Aside from the free flu shots for employees, dependents can get the shots for P480. If this is a subsidized price, then the total program cost will increase but the total effectivity could also increase since the employees' co-workers and family members are already immune, i.e. probability of getting sick is reduced.
------------------
**OR, maybe somebody in HR just decided that this would be a nice thing to do... :)
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