Wherever possible, employees who are able to do so should be working from home again. This is the case in all parts of the UK, following concern at the increase in cases of the Omicron variant, uncertainty about its severity and the effectiveness of vaccines against it.
The UK government and devolved administrations have stopped short of making home working a legal requirement again. The message is clear, however: employers should encourage and facilitate employees to work from home where possible. In Scotland, this will be the case until at least mid-January. The other areas of the UK have not given a timeline.
So what should employers do now? While many will have been reopening offices and trying to entice workers back in over recent months, employers must now change approach. Taking into account the health and safety duties incumbent upon them, employers should take steps to implement the government guidance.
Employers do not (for the time being) have to mandate home working and may allow some flexibility where an employee wishes to come into the office for, say, mental health reasons or where there is a clear business need for them to do so. If they have not already put in place a COVID-19 testing policy (and many have not), employers may wish to encourage employees who must go to a place of work to take regular lateral flow tests. Employers do not need to ask to see the test results, instead leaving it to employee discretion and common sense. This avoids the data protection challenges of a mandatory testing policy.
Sadly, this may not be the last restriction the government will reintroduce, in a bid to contain the spread of variants. It appears the start of 2022 will be almost as uncertain as the 21 months that preceded it. Employers may also need to redouble their efforts to monitor and support staff wellbeing as we approach the second anniversary of the start of the pandemic.
