As we all know, health and safety considerations are a very large part of an employer’s duty towards his or her employees. As this magazine goes to print, the government and the NHS in particular are ramping up their warnings and guidance about swine flu, predicting that some 30% of the public will contract it between mid August and November. The Department of Work and Pensions believes this will result in 9% absence from work in the summer rising to 12% in the winter. That’s a pretty staggering figure, and it is worth considering now how to minimise the likelihood of staff contracting swine flu in your workplace, and how to cope should the worst happen. First, you will need to check your company’s sickness and absence policies to ensure that they are legally up to date, relevant to your business, and are clearly written. Although the effects of swine flu in most cases only last about a week to ten days, it could cause prolonged absence in staff with underlying health conditions. It is worth noting here that it has recently been settled by the European Court of Justice that employees on long term sick leave still accrue paid holiday, and you will need to ensure that your sickness policy reflects this. You may also wish to implement a policy dealing with infectious diseases at work in order to provide guidelines on minimising risk and raising awareness of the problem. You might also consider gently suggesting to your workforce that you will be monitoring absences from work to identify those who might be pulling a sickie rather than being genuinely ill. The next step is to stop as much as possible the spread of germs which cause illness in the workplace. Jeff Manion, a Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner at Grove Services (UK) Ltd (www. groveservices.co.uk) says ‘Everyone should cover their nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing; use a tissue when possible; dispose of dirty tissues promptly and carefully, and maintain good basic hygiene, eg, washing hands frequently with soap and water and using alcohol-based hand gels to reduce the spread of the virus.’ Sterilizing shared kitchen crockery and cutlery is also important, and circumstances may also dictate the use by staff of facemasks. Should, despite your best efforts, your employees start going down with the virus, you may reach the point where there aren’t enough hands on deck, running the risk of overstretching the remaining staff thereby causing further illness and stress. This is when contingency planning for business emergencies comes to the fore. Any savvy board of directors should have something in place for when disasters happen – pandemic resulting in mass absenteeism, flood, fire, a serious IT malfunction or data threat, and many companies require their suppliers to have one in place too, as an emergency at a supplier could have a knock-on effect on their own service level obligations. How formal the plan is depends on the size of your business, obviously, but the important thing to remember is that it should be developed by a team comprised of decision makers from each area of the organisation and support must come from the very top. Preparing for emergencies, especially ones that in all likelihood may never happen, may seem like just another thing which the beleaguered business owner has to deal with. But knowing that your business and your employees’ health and well-being are protected will give you one less thing to lose sleep over.
Source: Robin Williams is principal at rwLaw, a specialist employment law firm
www.rwlaw.co.uk
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