From today, Wednesday 13 May, employers are being encouraged to bring their employees back to work if they cannot work from home. In this article, we explore the Government's guidelines, which includes practical steps to take when preparing for your workforce's return to work.
Returning to work
The Government has published 8 industry-specific guides (including for offices, labs/research facilities, and factories/warehouses) with the aim of helping workplaces become 'COVID-19 Secure'.
At the heart of the advice is the requirement to conduct a COVID-19 risk assessment that is specific to your business, with the guides providing suggestions as to how to achieve this in different types of workplaces.
Below, we have summarised the guidance that applies broadly to all workplaces, but would encourage employers to review the full guide for their respective industry sector as they each contain practical and easily digestible examples and checklists of measures to follow.
Once a risk assessment has been completed and implemented, employers are being asked to put up a self-certified poster in their workplace to reassure employees that they are COVID-19 Secure.
General guidance for all workplaces
The Government has provided some general guidance which applies to all workplaces:
- Working from home remains the default option - nobody should be going into work if they can work from home.
- If staff cannot work from home and the workplace has not been closed by the Government (e.g. non-essential retail), then staff should go to work. The numbers of people on site should be minimised down to those needed to run the business safely and effectively.
- The transmission risk should be managed by re-arranging workspaces to maintain 2 metres social distancing or, where that is not possible, other measures should be taken such as adjusting shift patterns or putting physical barriers in place.
- Employers should take special care with clinically vulnerable people (including those over 70 and with certain underlying conditions), for example by offering them the safest available on-site role, and always consider whether the risk to them may be unacceptable.
- Note that clinically extremely vulnerable people, which broadly include people who have received a letter from the NHS explaining that they are vulnerable, are strongly advised not to work outside the home.
- Employers should make reasonable adjustments to avoid disabled workers being put at a disadvantage. This is a legal obligation which derives from existing employment law.
- Be mindful of the needs of different groups of workers or individuals, and ensure those with protected characteristics (age, gender, disability, marital status, pregnancy, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation) are not discriminated against. Again, this reflects employers' legal obligations under existing employment law.
- Workplaces need to be cleaned more frequently, particularly areas which a lot of people use throughout the day. Hand washing facilities and sanitising wipes should also be made more widely available in the workplace.
- Masks and other Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) are not required and not to be encouraged, unless PPE was commonly used in your workplace before COVID-19 or the risk assessment shows that PPE is necessary.
- Non-medical face coverings are not required by law. However, they may provide some benefit for employees (e.g. while travelling to work or where social distancing is not possible), and employers should support workers who choose to wear one by giving them advice on proper usage and cleaning in order to maintain their efficacy.
Practical guidance for all workplaces
Alongside those more overarching general principles, the guides give plenty of practical suggestions of how employers should implement them. For example:
1. In the event that it is not possible to maintain social distancing for certain activities:
- Consider whether that activity needs to continue for the business to operate, and if so, take all mitigating actions possible to reduce the risk of transmission.
- Increase the frequency of handwashing and surface cleaning.
- Keep the activity time as short as possible.
- Work back-to-back or side-to-side.
- Reduce the number of people each person has contact with (e.g. by forming smaller, contained teams of employees that are separated from others).
2. To implement social distancing, consider:
- Staggering arrival and departure times and reducing congestion.
- Using floor markings and one-way movement flows.
- Providing more handwashing facilities at exit/entry points.
- Reducing staff movement and job rotation between different areas.
- Reducing maximum occupancy for lifts and other enclosed spaces.
- Alter layouts and use floor markings at workstations to keep distance.
- Using screens where workstations cannot comply with social distancing.
- Cleaning workstations between different occupants, and ideally avoiding hot-desking
- Avoiding face-to-face meetings, or holding meetings with limited people in well ventilated rooms with hand sanitiser available.
- Moving break/common areas outdoors, where the risk of transmission is much lower
- Encouraging staff to remain on-site for the entire working day.
- Limiting visitors and explaining your measures to visitors upon arrival, using trained hosts.
3. To improve cleaning and hygiene, consider:
- Increasing ventilation.
- Frequently cleaning working areas and objects that are touched regularly.
- Limiting use of high-touch items such as printers and whiteboards.
- Putting up posters and signs to remind employees to regularly wash their hands.
- Increasing provision of hand sanitisers, paper towels, and waste facilities.
Other things to note
The guides only provide practical suggestions - you are not obliged to follow every one of them to the letter, and they also do not override the law. Employers have a legal obligation to ensure that they are maintaining a safe place of work, and only employers will know the measures that need to be taken in their specific workplace in order to keep employees safe from COVID-19.
In addition to implementing new measures, employers should also consider how their measures can be audited. In other words, how they can ensure that employees are actually following the measures and that the measures are being effective in practice and keeping employees safe.
Finally, in larger workplaces it's important to remember to consult with the elected health and safety representative and/or the recognised trade union when planning a risk assessment. The Government has said that is expects workplaces of more than 50 employees to publish their risk assessments on their website, and in any event they should be provided to employees.
Originally published 13 May 2020
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
