With over 10,000 cases of swine flu reported in the UK and the World Health Organisation warning of a global pandemic, prudent employers should prepare themselves for possible disruption in the coming months.

Government estimates indicate that, at its peak, a pandemic could lead to absentee rates of 15-20%, which could prove to be catastrophic to some businesses if contingency plans are not put in place.

Companies should identify the functions of their business that are essential to their continued operation, and the employees who are capable of performing them. If need be, other staff members should be trained in these functions to ensure that they can still be carried out even if absentee rates soar to unprecedented levels.

In addition to securing the viability of their business, employers also have a duty of care to their employees to provide them with a safe working environment and protect them from unnecessary injury from reasonably foreseeable dangers.

By law, employers must:

• Perform an assessment of risk to employee’s health.
• Have a clear emergency procedures policy in place if an event occurs which is a “serious and immanent danger to persons at work”.
• Communicate relevant information about the emergency procedures to all employees.
• Ensure that employees have appropriate training in the emergency procedures.

Employers must make it clear to staff that those with the infection should not attend work until they are fully recovered in order to minimise the risk of infecting other employees. They may even want to consider imposing a quarantine period on employees with the virus.

It is possible that some employees may stay away from work not because they are ill, but because they fear contracting the virus from their colleagues. This situation puts employers in a difficult position, as they then must either require the employee to return to work, which may cause the employee to resign and perhaps subsequently claim constructive dismissal, or simply accept the employee’s decision and suffer further losses to productivity and profits.

Levels of absenteeism will also be affected by incidences of the illness in the children and dependants of workers. Employees have a statutory right to take unpaid time off work to make arrangements for the care of dependants - while they do not have the right to take time off to care for dependants themselves, in the event of a large-scale pandemic alternative carers may be hard to find, so employers could be forced to grant workers further time off to care for others.

Employers will also have to make sure that employees who are not ill continue to take the relevant rest breaks required by law and that, in covering for absent employees, they do not work more than the maximum hours allowed each week.

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