An employment lawyer is urging insurers and advisers to tread carefully when dealing with staff who refuse to return to face-to-face meetings.
Melanie Stancliffe, employment partner at law firm Cripps Pemberton Greenish, spoke to Health & Protection in the wake of the resumption of face-to-face meetings between insurers and advisers as lockdown restrictions ease and more people are double vaccinated.
Stancliffe warned that insurers and advisers may not be able to compel staff to attend such meetings.
“The first thing is to consider whether the employee has got a basis for that,” she said.
“For example, the law says if an employee has a genuine or serious concern there is going to be harm to their health… then they are entitled to not be treated less favourably or detrimentally or face a dismissal, demotion or reduction in pay because of that serious or genuine belief that their health is going to be damaged.”
Stancliffe added that employees would need to demonstrate these meetings would seriously damage their health.
“If they genuinely believe that and the employer hasn’t communicated all the cleaning, all the compliance and guidelines, all the sanitisers, all the masks, all the one way systems, then the employee should not be subject to any disciplinary action,” she added.