Winter challenges for your business ……. and solutions to help you cope with them …..

The winter months can bring many challenges for businesses, relating to staff. There is likely to be an increase in staff absence due to minor illnesses such as colds and flu and potentially absence caused by extreme weather conditions, as we experienced over the past couple of years.

Staff absences cost the UK economy billions of pounds every year, and for small businesses it is the inconvenience and additional workload that causes the most disruption and pressure.

The starting point for any business is to ensure it has measures in place to control absence levels and fair policies and procedures to deal with any occurrences. The rules should be communicated to all employees and managers should be trained in how to implement them, to ensure consistency.

Here are some top tips on how you can effectively control sickness absence levels

· Develop a simple and understandable procedure for controlling sickness absence.

· Ensure the procedures include reporting procedures, sick pay rules and any triggers for sanctions.

· Train managers to conduct return to work interviews without delay upon the employee’s return, to identify underlying reasons for the absence and communicate that the business is concerned about them.

· Adopt consistent practices throughout the business to enhance healthy working environment and encourage a culture of attendance.

Tips on how you can deal with absence caused by extreme weather conditions or disruptions to public transport

Regardless of weather conditions or other disruptions, it is your employees’ responsibility to get to work. If they are unable to attend work in these circumstances, you are under no obligation to pay them. The exception to this is if there is a contractual obligation on you to provide transport for your employees, to and from their place of work.

A policy on how to deal with these unusual situations is advisable, to ensure that all staff know who to report to if they are unable to get to work, and also what options are available to them.

If your employees cannot get into work by their normal mode of transport, you should first encourage your employees to explore alternative means of safe transport. If this is not possible then consider whether working from home is a viable option until the weather situation improves.

If neither of these are viable options, then you need to ensure that employees know that any time off work in these circumstances will be unpaid. The final option is that employees can request to take the time off as paid annual leave.

Different rules would apply if you chose to close the business due to the severe weather conditions and your employees were ready and able to attend work. If this were to happen then normal wages should be paid unless you have a contractual provision which allows you to consider this period an unpaid lay off period.