Advisers should conduct risk assessments for staff carrying out face-to-face meetings as Covid isolation requirements lift or risk falling foul of duty of care rules.
This is according to Melanie Stancliffe, partner at Cripps Pemberton Greenish, who was commenting in the wake of prime minister’s move to end the legal requirement to self-isolate for those who test positive for Covid last week.
Stancliffe told Health & Protection employers still have an overarching duty of care to ensure the health & safety of their employees – meaning advisers should be risk assessing the impact of the lifting of isolation requirements and how they can take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of their staff.
“The individuals who are going out of the building, are at greater risk because they are going into an environment where there is no control exercised by their employer,” Stancliffe said.
“I think that employer would have to take steps and would have to provide some form of support to the employee – be that masks, hand sanitisers.”
But Stancliffe added that employers also need to consider the safety of clinically vulnerable people as well as the health & safety of people coming onto their premises for meetings.
“The difficulty is that when they are assessing what their risk is – the employee going into that client won’t necessarily know and it may not be politick to ask clients what measures they are taking to ensure health & safety on their premises.
“If there are long standing and good relationships between client and staff, they may be able to ask in advance, could you just let us know what health & safety steps you are taking for Covid so that our people know before they come into to you? That would be the ideal situation…
“I get the sense that a lot of people think this has all gone away… the same duty to ensure safety, security and people apply and the same risks to the employer apply.”