Working in hot weather, work-related stress, and antenatal appointments
During the recent heatwave, my staff said it was too hot to work and that I should have sent them home. Were they right?
In short, no. And despite what your staff might claim, no law exists about a temperature limit while working. But your staff could still have a point.
The HSE’s health & safety regulations advise that workplace temperatures should remain “reasonable”. To decide what’s reasonable, look at factors like the type of work they do (is it heavy manual labour or not?) and where they do it (are they indoors or outdoors?).
But on the rare occasion that the UK weather climbs above chilly and temperatures in your workplace reach uncomfortably high levels, you don’t have to send your people home. You could instead provide desk fans, relax formal dress codes or even hand out free cold drinks.
My employee called in sick saying he has work-related stress. What should I do?
First, you should acknowledge your employee’s illness and tell him to return to work when he feels comfortable to do so.
Once he’s fit to return, hold a return to work meeting with him to discuss the factors that have caused his stress. Perhaps he has an excessive workload. Maybe he feels he lacks support. It could be that he’s had a breakdown in his working relationships.
Listen carefully to him and put in place a plan to address the problems. Over the next few months, hold a series of informal chats with him to make sure he knows you’re there to support him.
My pregnant employee keeps having antenatal appointments in the middle of the day and it’s impacting our work. Can I ask her to move them?
You may ask her to try to make her antenatal appointments for outside of working hours, but she’s under no obligation to do so.
In practice, she’ll have little control over the date or time of her appointments. It’ll be when her medical practitioner is available and can fit her in. Your employee is entitled to paid time off to attend a reasonable number of antenatal appointments, which she can take during working hours.
But remember: don’t treat pregnant employees any less favourably for attending antenatal appointments during working time. A tribunal would consider that to be discriminatory.