COVID and other infectious diseases – what is the correct workplace etiquette now?

In this podcast

The rules around COVID-19 were very clearly drawn in 2020. But what is the state of play now, not just in relation to COVID but to illness in the workplace generally? What should organisations do about employees who are nervous about returning to the workplace? Or about at-risk employees, particularly when infection rates are high? Or about long COVID — is it now treated as a disability? Bar Huberman, strategy and practice head of content at Brightmine, formerly XpertHR, offers guidance.

Introduction

Robert Shore: Hello, and welcome to the XpertHR podcast. XpertHR is a comprehensive source of leading practice, employment law and benchmarking information for HR professionals, providing solutions and expertise for every HR role, challenge and opportunity. You can find us any time of the day or night at www.brightmine.com.

My name is Robert Shore, and I am delighted to be joined today by Bar Huberman, HR strategy and practice content manager at XpertHR. Hello, Bar.

Bar Huberman: Hi, Robert.

Current rules on COVID-19 at work

Robert Shore: And we are taking as our theme managing COVID-19 and other contagious diseases in the workplace in 2024. And many of the things that we’re going to be talking about have a broader application to attitudes to more than COVID — other infectious conditions and sickness generally.

There was a time, of course, when it seemed we could speak of nothing but COVID. And then there was silence, or comparative silence, after so much noisy messaging. As we all remember, there were lots of guidelines and even mandatory requirements when COVID first began trending in 2020.

So to get the conversation started, tell me what are the rules now, Bar?

Bar Huberman: Well, largely there are no rules. There is Government guidance around minimising the spread of respiratory infections, including COVID-19. But this is guidance only and it uses terms like “employers may wish to consider how best to enable their workforce to follow this guidance.”

So we’re now in a place where employer’s actions around COVID-19 are falling within their general duties around the protection of employees’ health, safety and welfare. But at XpertHR we have noticed that employers are still interested in our COVID guidance, and there are good reasons for that. Respiratory illnesses, of which COVID-19 is one, are a major cause of illness at the moment. According to the NHS

Confederation, in the last week of January 2024 there was an average of 2,226 patients in hospital every day with ‘flu, up from 41% the previous week. According to Government statistics in the two weeks leading up to 24 January, around 1 in 50 people were infected with COVID-19. So employers are clearly feeling the impact of this and HR teams are looking for ways to help their organisation manage the situation.

But beyond that, COVID is still a sensitive subject for many people. Some people have strong opinions about it, and it can still be a significant illness for some people. People will have had very personal experiences around it. So getting the management of COVID-19 right is something employers are focused on at the moment.

Latest COVID-19 symptoms

Robert Shore: Yeah. So what are the latest symptoms?

Bar Huberman: Well, turning again to Government guidance, it now says that the symptoms of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections are very similar, and it lists a whole bunch of symptoms. So we’re no longer in a space where the continuous cough, the high temperature or a loss of taste or smell are the factors for employers to be aware of. The guidance also lists symptoms like shortness of breath, tiredness, muscle aches, headaches that are unusual. So employers and employees don’t have the certainty that they once had.

Robert Shore: So why it’s possibly quite useful then to think more generally?

Bar Huberman: Yeah, that’s right.

Key considerations for HR dealing with COVID at work

Robert Shore: So you’re in HR or people management and you hear the word “COVID”. What areas should HR be thinking about now with regard to it? So you know, if we’re resetting on this, how do we think about it? What’s the main thing?

Bar Huberman: Well, I think it’s that lack of clarity that’s causing confusion among the workforce. So I think the first thing to note as an employer is the importance of communication, putting employees at ease by explaining what your COVID policy or approach is, and what you’re doing to protect people is still important. And I do think that actually a lot of the workforce doesn’t know where they stand at the moment if they catch COVID-19, if one of their family members or people they’re living with have it, one of their colleagues has it. So it’s important not to forget that as an HR team you should be thinking about communicating in some way what your organisation’s approach is.

Robert Shore: Right. So there’s confusion. Communication is key. How do you communicate, though, what you have to communicate? What steps should employers be taking?

Bar Huberman: You need to tell people — tell your people, the workforce — what you expect from them when they’re sick and what response they should expect from their manager. And when it comes to line managers it’s key that they know how to respond to people when they phone in sick with a positive COVID test or symptoms of a respiratory illness. So communication is really one of the most important things here. It will help to avoid a guessing game and it will promote consistency.

But I would also communicate the approach you’re taking to keeping people safe. And you could also issue other guidelines around speaking to your manager if you’re concerned, for example, that a colleague has COVID.

Robert Shore: And they’re coming into work?

Bar Huberman: Yes.

When an employee has COVID-19

Robert Shore: Now you said before, there are really no rules anymore, but where do employees stand if they have COVID-19? Are they required to not come into work?

Bar Huberman: Well, according to Government guidance the risk of becoming seriously unwell for most people is very low. And as I mentioned, it’s also not possible to tell from symptoms alone if you have COVID. And the guidance says if you have symptoms of a respiratory infection and you have a high temperature or you’re not feeling well enough to go out, then you should stay at home until you don’t have a fever or you’re feeling well enough to do your normal activities.

There’s also not a requirement to test for COVID, whether or not you have symptoms. But for the majority of employees there are no actual Government requirements around not coming into work if you have symptoms of a respiratory infection or even if you do decide to test yourself and you test positive. So on the face of it, as a workplace you can deal with COVID as you would deal with any other sickness in the workplace under your sickness policy, which normally says that if you’re not well enough to work you should take the time off as sick and the pay will be according to your company’s sick pay policy. And if that’s your organisation’s approach it is worth explaining that because not too long ago people were really clear that they should be isolating if they have symptoms or if they test positive.

Robert Shore: Some employers then are taking a slightly different approach?

Bar Huberman: Yes. There are some employees who will be at high risk and organisations are also concerned about keeping them safe as well as being driven by wanting to reduce the spread of infection. For those employers whose staff can work remotely, many are choosing to say, “If you are testing positive you can work from home if you’re well enough to do so for a short period until you test negative, or if you have mild respiratory symptoms then again work from home until you feel better.”

Covid-19 testing

Robert Shore: You mentioned testing there. Can you oblige employees to take a test and indeed, if you can, should you?

Bar Huberman: If the employer wants to keep its workforce as free as possible from COVID-19, you could supply employees with lateral flow tests, and you can ask them to take a test if they have symptoms or just to regularly test themselves. So for example, if you’re in a high-risk setting. You can ask them to do that but in that case you should consider providing the tests because they’re no longer free of charge. And in that case you should also make it clear how many days you expect people to stay at home if they do test positive.

If a family member has COVID-19

Robert Shore: Where are we now then when an employee’s family member or someone they live with has the positive test result or has symptoms?

Bar Huberman: Well, there’s no current Government guidance that says you must stay at home if a member of your family or someone you live with has COVID. But as an employer you might choose an approach that says people in this situation should work from home or ask them to test themselves every day for, say, 10 days and if they’re testing positive ask them to work from home where that’s possible.

Robert Shore: How about the case where people want to work from home because they or their partner are testing positive but an employer takes the opposite view and wants people to come into work?

Bar Huberman: Assuming someone’s well enough to come into work and they don’t, say, need to look after a family member, some employers are taking the approach that even if they or a family member are testing positive they should come into work. I do think, though, that it’s sensible to bear in mind what we said at the beginning, that COVID is a sensitive subject and some people are worried about catching it, in particular if they’re high-risk or someone they live with is. Or say they’re about to go on holiday, or maybe they just don’t want to be ill. So it’s worth thinking about what additional measures you can put in place to keep people safe and feeling more at ease.

And also don’t forget you do have duties around keeping people safe. The Government guidance does say that you should try to stay at home for five days if you are testing positive. So I do think employers need to think carefully before they ask employees who test positive for COVID to come into the workplace.

Safety measures

Robert Shore: Are there other things that employers, then, should be doing to keep people safe or simply make them feel safe?

Bar Huberman: Employers can absolutely be doing some of the things they were doing at the height of the pandemic, and make it clear to people that they are doing these things. So issuing guidance around hand-washing, perhaps keeping people who are testing positive at a distance, maybe staggering their start and finish times, and of course regular cleaning of workstations. Then there’s mask-wearing and providing masks. And ventilation. Particularly if you do have high-risk employees, it’s worth working with them and their manager to understand how you can keep them safe.

Robert Shore: Let’s take another case. An employee wants to come to work but the employer doesn’t want them to, to prevent the spread of disease if they’ve tested positive or their partner has. What’s the position there?

Bar Huberman: Well, going back to the Government guidance, it does say, “Try to stay at home and avoid contact with others for five days if you’re testing positive,” and if the employer wants to adhere to that, in that case I think your guidance should be: “Work from home if you can and if you can’t, stay at home for the relevant period and we’ll continue to pay you in full.”

Arrangements for employees who must be on-site

Robert Shore: I mean, you mentioned there working from home and we talk a lot about working from home, and that’s obviously always quite a nice route out of this problem, but of course a lot of people have public-facing roles where their work requires them to be physically on-site. Are the rules, such as they are, different for those people?

Bar Huberman: Well yeah, this is a trickier situation for those employers where workers don’t have the luxury of being able to carry on working while in the safety of their own home. So I think it is important to acknowledge that people in public-facing roles — and there are many of them in a wide variety of jobs — are at greater risk of catching viruses because they’re more exposed.

So for these employers it’s even more important to be really clear about what your expectations are if somebody has symptoms or has tested positive for COVID. And here the requirement to continue to pay in full if you’re asking people to stay at home applies.

When deciding what those expectations are going to be of people, do take into account several things. So again, your duties around protecting health and safety, Government guidance around people staying at home if they’re unwell, the likelihood that people will spread illness if they come into contact, what impact it will have on employee engagement if people are working alongside somebody who has symptoms or has tested positive, and how well you’re able to keep people safe through things such as encouraging good personal hygiene and cleaning common areas.

Guidelines for two-tier workplaces

Robert Shore: Should employers be sensitive when they’re drawing out guidelines relating to what we call “two-tier workplaces”, where knowledge workers can often readily work from home but others can’t? How can HR ensure that everyone feels equally supported and valued?

Bar Huberman: Well, it is really important to be aware that applying one set of guidelines to hybrid workers and another set to those in public-facing jobs can not only cause tension among people in your workforce but it can also exacerbate the disadvantages that many people in those sorts of roles already face, with research showing that wages tend to be lower, working conditions tend to be worse. But many leading employers have put in place more wellbeing support for workers during and since the pandemic, and they can continue to do more. So things like offering vouchers for the ‘flu vaccine for everybody, or providing more mental health support. So the NHS, for example, put in place confidential telephone support for their employees during COVID.

We’ve got some great guidance on XpertHR about how to support people’s wellbeing, whether you’re starting on your journey or you need to do more. Some workplaces have actually even modified roles and working conditions for public facing employees to make them safer, like introducing better ventilation systems. So there’s a lot that you can do as an employer to make everybody feel supported.

What about employees who don’t want to return?

Robert Shore: So it’s important to be sensitive and also creative about it as well. The question then about what we’re heating in terms of the legacy of the first period of the pandemic, are employers still dealing with situations where some employees don’t want to return to work on-site at all as a result of COVID?

Bar Huberman: Yes. I mean, there may be people who feel they’re at higher risk from COVID or maybe they’ve been told they are, or there are people for whom working from home just suits them more. So for people who are at high risk, employers should work with them and their medical practitioners or occupational health to decide what’s best. And it’s important to remember that where somebody has a disability, you really need to think about the duty to make reasonable adjustments.

Robert Shore: Okay. And what about where people want to stay at home because it suits them?

Bar Huberman: Well, employers know that employees can make flexible working requests to work from home, and if they do then you need, as an HR department, to follow the relevant steps and consider that request appropriately. And there is an argument, of course, that if people have been working from home successfully for four years they should be able to continue to do that. But most employers are finding real positive effects of having people come together in the workplace, even if technically they can do most of their job at home. So as an employer you really need to decide what approach you’re going to take to balancing all the competing needs and issues at play here.

And, you know, you should also think about whether you’re providing employees with an enticing place to work. Some leading employers are really taking steps to think about their workplace setup and offering because they realise that they need to do more to encourage people to want to come into the workplace.

Best practices for managing employees with long COVID

Robert Shore: Yes. And we can’t leave the topic of COVID without talking about long COVID, because that is a reality for people. What best practices can we share with HR?

Bar Huberman: HR should be applying good practices around managing sickness absence to employees who have long COVID. But I think a few particular things to note about long COVID are the symptoms and impact on people are varied and it’s still a relatively new condition so employees and their health practitioners may still be trying to understand what the best way is to deal with it. And for some people — and this is quite important — the symptoms can come and go.

It’s also really important to be aware that it may be classed as a disability and there has been some case law around that. So I think to manage long COVID it’s really important for HR practitioners to work closely with occupational health, the employee, the line manager, the employee’s medical practitioners, to establish what adjustments can be made to enable an ongoing working relationships. And often flexibility on the part of the employer will be key because there is the potential with long COVID for things to fluctuate.

Any positive changes prompted by COVID-19

Robert Shore: Finally, then, to return briefly to some of the themes you touched on just before, are there positive things we can say came out of the COVID pandemic, or rather the workplace response to it? Has it changed the way we think about the need to be present in the office, and indeed our duty to protect others more generally?

Bar Huberman: I think it has made employers think about their workforce in a different way. The fact that we were all relying on frontline workers to keep essential services going has made everyone, including employers, think that actually we really need to look after these people, and that’s why there’s been a much greater emphasis on wellbeing. And in 2024 we’re seeing wellbeing is absolutely a priority for many employers.

And employees too now do have a greater expectation that their employer will take steps to implement good wellbeing practices. And as part of that there does seem to be more emphasis from employers and employees on avoiding presenteeism. So not coming into work when you’re ill because we want to protect those around us.

Robert Shore: That’s a great note on which to end. Bar, thank you so much. As Bar mentioned, XpertHR has some useful resources on its website and we’ll be putting links to those in the show notes. We hope you’ve found this episode useful. If you’d like to get in touch you can tweet us @xperthr or email us at podcast@xperthr.co.uk. We would love to hear from you. Until next time.