Adam Morris, a solicitor at Wright Hassall, suggests that employers should have a plan in place for when weather might disrupt their staff’s ability to attend work
In recent years, the UK has seen significant disruption from the effects of extreme weather conditions, which, along with other external factors, can affect an employee’s ability to get to work let alone do their job. And there are plenty of headlines relating to weather and its impact on the transport sector. In 2009, the Oxford Mail wrote about a ban that the Oxford Bus Company put on drivers wearing shorts in hot weather. Fourteen years later, Unite was demanding an independent audit for London drivers who were warning of the same heat distress.
Over the years CBW has run stories about problems with cold weather. In 2018, it wrote that ‘Lothian thanks staff and customers after severe weather.’ And three years later in 2021, it ran two more stories : ‘Reading Buses teams keep services running during heavy snowfall’ and ‘Go North East pulls out all the stops during snow disruption.’
When bad weather hits employers can often be left unsure how to deal with a situation where an employee tells them they are unable to work due to travel disruption and/or adverse weather conditions.
Of course, it’s important to recognise that in recent years, the working world has changed drastically; now many people work from home on a regular basis and, if not permanently, could do so if needed. For employers where this is commonplace in their business, the effect of adverse weather conditions or travel disruptions might be insignificant. And this is fine for some administrative staff in the transport sector, but for drivers and those on the ‘front line’ in a depot, they’re either at work or vehicles don’t get driven.
Interruptions
Most employees will make every effort to ensure that non-work-related factors do not get in the way of them attending work and undertaking a normal day’s work. That said, unfortunately, there are a number of matters outside of an employee’s control which may make attending work more difficult or even impossible. These could include weather events such as snow, ice and flooding which often lead to road closures and disruption to public transport; roadworks and highway maintenance; industrial action where strikes might prevent an employee from taking their usual train or bus journey to work; and flight cancellations where a cancelled flight to return from holiday might mean that an employee cannot get to work at the end of a period of annual leave.
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