HR & EMPLOYMENT LAW

Jackie le Poidevin, Editor-in-Chief, HR Adviser
Email: hr@agorabusiness.co.uk
HR Adviser Online Resource Centre

4 Options to Manage the Impact of School Closures and a Return to Shielding

The Government announced this week that schools will be closed to most students until the February half-term holidays (at least) and clinically extremely vulnerable people across England should once again stay home. Here, we explain what you can do if you have employees affected by these decisions.

  1. Rely on the Exemption for Key Workers

Schools are remaining open for the children of specified critical workers employed in these sectors: health and social care, education and childcare, key public services, public safety and national security, some local and national government, the production, distribution and sale of food and other necessary goods, utilities, communication and financial services, transport and border.

If at least one parent is a critical worker, the exemption applies. So even if an employee isn’t a key worker themselves but their partner is, they may still be able to send their children to school. The list of key workers is here: bit.ly/3s0IAp7.

  1. Agree on Home Working

Depending on their role, an employee who is shielding or looking after children may be able to work from home. If their current role isn’t compatible with remote working, you might suggest they temporarily swap to an alternative role, if you have something suitable available.

Whether someone can juggle work effectively around childcare will depend on whether:

  • Their children are old enough to be left unsupervised for any length of time.
  • They have a partner, parent or someone else who can share childcare duties.
  • It’s possible for them to make up their hours outside core office times, for example in the early morning, evenings or at weekends.

You’ll need to talk through what’s possible with the employee to try and find a mutually acceptable solution.

Tip: If there’s either not enough work available that an employee can do remotely or they can’t work their usual hours because of home schooling, you’ll need to consider a reduction in hours. In this case, the employee might work part-time from home and be on furlough for the remainder of their hours (see next point).

3. Furlough the Employee

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme guidance confirms that you may furlough staff who can’t work because they:

  • Are clinically extremely vulnerable.
  • Have caring responsibilities resulting from the pandemic.

You do not need to be closed or facing a reduction in demand to be eligible to claim for these employees.

You can flexibly furlough employees. So, for example, an employee who is sharing childcare duties with their partner could come into work 2 or 3 days a week and be on furlough for the rest of their hours.

4. Make Use of the Employee’s Existing Leave Entitlements

If an employee can’t work because they’re shielding or caring for young children, I would recommend furlough as the fairest way forward.

In some limited situations, however, another option might be appropriate. For example, an employee might make childcare arrangements but face a glitch with these. In this situation, you might decide you’re not prepared to furlough the employee (and perform all the calculations) when this is only going to be a short-lived problem. Your choices in this case include:

  • Unpaid dependants’ leave: this is available for employees who need time off to deal with an emergency involving their child (or another dependant).
  • Unpaid parental leave: employees who have worked for you for at least a year can take up to 4 weeks’ parental leave per year per child (up to 18 weeks in total per child). Normally, the employee must give you 21 days’ notice but you can waive this requirement. This might be appropriate if the employee knows in advance that they’ll be facing a brief gap in childcare – it’s not an emergency but they can use this pot of leave instead.
  • Paid annual leave: rather than lose pay, the employee could use up some of their holiday entitlement.

Tip: Another option worth considering is reverse time off in lieu. This might be appropriate if an employee has a very flexible arrangement with you while the schools are closed. Perhaps they have older children who can mainly look after themselves but the employee isn’t quite managing to fit in their full hours. In this case, you might consider paying them as normal as long as they make the time up later by doing unpaid overtime.

This could work well if you’re currently putting certain projects on hold and expect to be busier than normal when the lockdown is over.

 

PAYROLL

Sarah Bradford, Editor-in-Chief, Pay & Benefits Adviser
Email: pab@agorabusiness.co.uk
Pay & Benefits Adviser Online Resource Centre

Extension to CJRS and Third National Lockdown   

In December, as stricter local Coronavirus restrictions were introduced, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, previously extended until 31 March 2021, would continue for a further month, until 30 April 2021.

Extended Scheme

Under the extended scheme, the Government will continue to cover 80% of an employee’s wages for the employee’s furloughed hours, to a maximum of £2,500 a month. As currently, employees can be fully or flexibly furloughed and a claim made for the normal hours that the employee does not work. Where an employee is flexibly furloughed, the employer must pay the employee for the hours that they work at their usual rate.

The claim is limited to 80% of the employee’s wages up to the level of the cap; the employer must meet the cost of the associated employer’s National Insurance contributions. Likewise, employees must pay tax and employee’s National Insurance on any grant payments that they receive.

A strict time limit applies for making claims under the scheme. Claims must be made for a calendar month by the 14th of the following month. Where this falls on a weekend or bank holiday, the deadline is the next working day. Claims for December 2020 must be made by 14 January 2021 and claims for January 2021 must be made by 15 February 2021.

Lockdown 3 and Working Parents

On 4 January 2021, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced a third national lockdown in England to stem transmission of the new, highly contagious, variant of the Coronavirus. Unlike the second national lockdown in late 2020, schools are required now to close. The national lockdown will be reviewed on 15 February 2021.

While schools remain open for the children of key workers and for vulnerable children, children not in these categories are required to stay at home. This presents a challenge for working parents forcing to juggle their work commitments, home schooling and childcare.

Where a parent’s job is incompatible with the need to provide childcare and home schooling, the CJRS scheme can provide something of a lifeline, as employers can furlough or flexibly furlough employees unable to work due to childcare commitments.

The scheme can be used for employees who are unable to work or who need to work reduced hours because of caring commitments. The Government guidance confirms that this includes employees who are caring for ‘children who are at home as a result of school or childcare facilities closing’.

Consider Flexible Furloughing

Flexible furlough may be something of a win-win situation, allowing employers to work less hours and to fit those hours around their childcare commitments. For example, where parents are working from home, they may be able to juggle their day around the children, for example, working in the evening once young children are in bed.

This would enable the employee to meet the need to look after their children while continuing to do some work. Where an employee is flexibly furloughed, the hours worked do not have to be the same each week.

Where this option is taken, the employer will need to agree the furloughing arrangements with the employee in writing. The agreement should be kept for at least 5 years. The employer will also need to keep a record of the hours worked, if any, and the number of furloughed hours to support the grant claim.

 

HEALTH & SAFETY

Paul Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Health & Safety Adviser
Email: hsadviser@agorabusiness.co.uk
Health & Safety Adviser Online Resource Centre
View Paul’s COVID-Secure Risk Assessment video here.

Employers: Need for Extreme Caution as Cases Spiral Again

It’s what everyone dreaded: a second wave of Covid-19 hitting the NHS in the middle of winter just when its resources are most stretched. As almost every part of the UK now finds itself in yet another lockdown, resident health and safety expert Paul Smith takes stock of the implications for employers and comments on the TUC’s call for even more stringent workplace precautions.

What a difference a fortnight makes! Just before Christmas, we were taking comfort from the start of vaccinations while expressing concern about a new Covid-19 strain first identified in the South East of England.

Why Our Situation is So Precarious

Now it’s a straight race between injection and infection. The new variant we highlighted in December has now been assessed as between 50 and 70% more contagious, and there’s the (possibly even more dangerous) ‘South African’ variant to contend with as well.

The latest infection figures are truly eye-watering: 80,000 deaths to date, infections running at four times what we saw in December, daily new cases exceeding 60,000, and more people in hospital with Covid-19 than in April last year. Sometimes it’s the simplest figures that shock most: 1,000,000 (one in 50) people are now estimated to be infected.

New Lockdowns Imposed

Whether you get your daily news from radio, TV, newspaper or online, you would have to have been in some sort of bunker to have missed the fact that almost every UK postcode is now subject to a legal ban on people leaving their homes without valid reason, on top of which we have the closure of schools, colleges, hospitality and ‘non-essential’ retail.

Against this needs to be set the good news that vaccinations are taking off on a massive scale and most workplaces can remain open, although anyone who can work at home should do so. But this does place new pressure on employers and managers to make sure their Covid-secure precautions are up to speed, both to minimise the danger of actual infection and to give employees the vital reassurance that their workplace is safe. We need to recognise that many will be even more worried now than ever before.

Our Experience

As we carry out our own safety checks, we see that some employers are now going beyond the official recommendations, for example, by requiring people to wear face coverings in the workplace. We have also visited sites that have very good precautions on paper but no-one is checking whether they are actually being followed in practice. That’s a failing that applies to almost every health and safety issue and is not limited to Covid!

TUC Call for New Tighter Standards Targeting the Inhalation Risk

It’s not surprising therefore that the TUC has issued a new call this week for more stringent precautions, focusing especially on how Covid is transmitted. So far, we’ve worked on the basis that it’s spread by inhalation and by contact with surfaces, but the TUC is arguing for much stronger action on the former. Earlier this week, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady called for official guidance, dating back to March last year, to be updated urgently. She said:

‘With new strains of coronavirus spreading like wildfire, workplace safety rules must catch up. We have a much better understanding of how people catch Covid-19 now than when the rules were written. Airborne transmission is the biggest danger. Too many workers are still in indoor spaces without adequate ventilation, or proper social distancing.’ Specifically, she calls for:

  • Updated rules on ventilation, masks, social distancing and how many people can be in a room.
  • Employers to redo their risk assessments and ensure all are following the rules.
  • More vigorous action by HSE and local authority inspectors to target non-compliant firms.

 

Given the latest figures, we would not wait for further guidance but recommend you:

  1. Make sure your Covid-19 risk assessment is up to date.
  2. Ask employees what’s working and what’s not.
  3. Monitor that your precautions are being applied in practice.
  4. Re-check that everyone understands your procedures – including staff, visitors, contractors and customers.
  5. Use any identified shortfalls, plus ideas from what other organisations are doing, as the basis of a ‘continuous improvement’ action plan.