Employment Service Adviser at the NFU, Mandy Phanasan offers tips on your obligations and dealing with staffing issues during periods of disruptive weather.

With the UK experiencing harsher and more extreme weather conditions than ever before, the potential consequences for the workplace have never been more relevant. Adverse weather conditions can range from heavy snowfall and flooding to gale force winds and icy hazardous road conditions. Here we discuss the importance of how weather and travel disruptions can impact your staff and how you can manage this problem effectively.

Travel Disruptions

Severe weather warnings regarding dangerous conditions are normally issued by the Met Office and/or local police authority. The police may advise the public that people should not travel unless there is no alternative.

Travelling difficulties can be exacerbated by factors such as the location of an employee’s home relative to their place of work, available transport options, weather warnings and road reports in their area, and school closures.

These circumstances must be considered by the business where an employee finds themselves delayed or unable to attend work.

How should time off be treated?

Business decision to close due to adverse weather:

Where you are forced to close your business due to adverse weather, there is an obligation to pay staff their usual pay. It may be possible to use lay-off or short-time working where there is a contractual right to do so, and the circumstances allow for this. The exception to this is for staff who have historic terms under the Agricultural Wages Order 2012 in England or are currently working as an agricultural worker in Wales. These groups must be paid for any of their contractual hours of work which fall within a period of bad weather.

Employee is prevented or disrupted from getting to work due to the weather:

You can require staff to make every effort to attend their normal place of work and have a clear policy in place stating they must contact a manager if this is not possible.

If an employee is unable to travel to work, or are late because of the severe weather conditions, you can consider the following options:

• Allow for the time to be made up at a later date.
• Enable the absence to be taken as annual leave entitlement.
• Where practical, allow home working or remote working.
• Consider authorising the time as unpaid leave.

As discussed, weather conditions can create school closures resulting in unexpected childcare issues. The right to time off for dependants means employees must be given a reasonable amount of time off to deal with an emergency involving a dependant such as a child. There is no requirement for this time to be paid, subject to any contractual policy you have in place.

If it is suspected that an employee was not prevented from attending their work but has failed to do so, then the matter should be investigated and, where appropriate, your disciplinary procedure should be followed.

If weather conditions change during a working day, employees are not automatically entitled to pay for leaving early, unless there is a business decision to close early.

If an employee requests to leave early, how this is treated will be dependent on their employment contract, and any policy or implied agreements in place.

How the NFU Employment Service can help you

Having clear policies is integral to your business and the NFU Employment Service provides advice and support through a suite of policies and templates to ensure your practices comply with the law. Alternatively, you can use our consultancy services for the drafting of bespoke documentation.

Please contact us to find out more by calling our Helpline on 0370 840 0234, or visiting us online.