Some organisations are getting their staff back to the workplace this summer. However, Covid cases are rising rapidly and employers still have their duty to protect their employees’ health and safety. Asking staff to take regular lateral flow tests may be part of the organisation’s policy on making the workplace Covid secure. However, what happens if an employee does not wish to take tests? Can you enforce this?

Post Monday 19 July if an employer has not done “something” about the contractual place of work clause in its contracts of employment, each day that goes by is an implied acceptance by the employer that working from home is fine. In this way any contractual office – based place of work clause is being daily eroded to become a working from home clause by custom and practice. This is because working from home is not now as a result of a government edict.

There appears to be considerable confusion over the current rules relating to self isolation when an individual has (or may have) been in close contact with another who then tests positive for COVID-19. With record numbers of people being ‘pinged’ by the NHS Covid-19 app, this is having a real impact on some employers’ ability to keep their businesses going. In this bulletin we take a look at the different ways in which individuals can be asked to self isolate and consider how employers should respond in the workplace.

In June, the government provided details of the changes to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (furlough scheme) which apply from 1 July 2020. In this bulletin we look at how employers can use the more flexible scheme to implement beneficial changes to how their business works, together with taking steps to avoid having to lose valuable staff through redundancy. The information set out in this bulletin is accurate as at 3 July 2020.

As an outsourced HR service provider and employment lawyers we, like many of you, are having to navigate through unprecedented times. We are currently being inundated with questions from our clients about the topic of holidays and foreign travel. There is so much information out there in a variety of places, so it’s understandably confusing. This update is stating the situation as at June 11, 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on how we work and how business is conducted both on a local and a global scale. During isolation, it is no surprise that some of our staff are feeling isolated. In light of the announcement by the UK government that lockdown has been extended and with little clarity for when these measures may be relaxed, staff at Jones Chase outline the joys and struggles of working from home during this confusing and uncertain time.