What are the options for an employer if an employee is not social distancing outside work hours.

Is there any specific guidance for this situation? I cannot seem to find any as results always seem to hit on social distancing in work.

This is clearly a risk factor potentially exposing the rest of the work force to Coronavirus and needs to be controlled.

Thanks

Originally Posted by: Adrian Nexam

What are the options for an employer if an employee is not social distancing outside work hours.

Please get a life if they are outside of work they are beyond the employers control.

You cannot monitor them 24/7 and you cannot dictate their behaviour 24/7.

What will you do if they tell you to "sod off and mind your own business" which they would be well within their rights to do - they are employees not slaves or chattles.

...the employee should take all reasonable precautions to be properly prepared to attend for thier shift...in the best example is the person who is on nights not having sleep before the shift and therefore not physically able to complete the job role expected of him safely....bit of a stretch but if they don't isolate or follow the rules and you have evidence to support this and they get COVID-19 and have to isolate then not able to complete the job they are assigned?...as I say bit of a stretch but plausable..I have done it for night workers successfully but I haven't looked at this for CODVID-19

The police have no powers to make two individuals stand 2m apart - it is guidance NOT law

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Originally Posted by: Adrian Nexam

What are the options for an employer if an employee is not social distancing outside work hours.

Please get a life if they are outside of work they are beyond the employers control.

You cannot monitor them 24/7 and you cannot dictate their behaviour 24/7.

What will you do if they tell you to "sod off and mind your own business" which they would be well within their rights to do - they are employees not slaves or chattles.

Except that in many cases, where their actions outside of work contribute to the safety (or otherwise) of your other employees (or people not in your employ), it could be reasonable to intrude.  If one of the operators of your heav machinery turns up [expletive deleted]ed / stoned and tells you to "sod off and mind your own business", will you 'get a life' (whatever that means in this context) and permit them to operate your machinery?

No problem with monitoring drink or drugs to attend work where the company has a documented stated contractual policy - this post is discussing infectious agents amongst the general public.

There are many more communicable diseases an employee could contract not merely by ignoring this latest social distancing guidance but through being in the presence of their family or household or by just "living" which may be brought in to the workplace - measels, mumps, rubella, chickepox (shingles), TB, influenza.... all now starting to rise in numbers due to vaccinations being suspended.

Originally Posted by: Adrian Nexam

What are the options for an employer if an employee is not social distancing outside work hours.

Is there any specific guidance for this situation? I cannot seem to find any as results always seem to hit on social distancing in work.

This is clearly a risk factor potentially exposing the rest of the work force to Coronavirus and needs to be controlled.

Thanks

Once they know whaere you're coming from, they'll just lie.

I must admit I have scimmed the comments as I think you are thinking too narrow...this isn't about COVID-19 it is about being prepared for your shift...if your actions outside work mean that you are others are put at riks as a result of it then you are the one at fault not the company....the compmany has to make all reasonable efforts to ensure that the employee has prepared themselves properly...difficult task and hard to prove...

I agree with SteveDM about this not being Covid specific. It is about the level of relationship between the employer and employee, and in particular the trust that's there. I've worked in an environment where employees were expected to maintain their healthy capacity for work, and this was underpinned by a contractual requirement. This however was invariably managed by the employee and their colleagues very positively and very rarely was the underpinning threat ever surfaced. However... that site had a standard of supervisory management I have not seen elsewhere and the general T&C's of employees (and contractors) very good. I have seen companies mimic the "demands" on the employees vigorously whilst paying lip-service to their own inputs, with cery poor results.... You can't build that level of trust in the timeframe needed for Covid and using Covid as an "excuse" will likely be counter productive.

Unless you're very confident that such a relationship exists perhaps take Roundtuits advice for now... 

If you really would like to build such a culture it is possible... but far from easy, and in my experience less and less companies are interested in upskilling their management to the levels necessary.

grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference​​​​​​​

Originally Posted by: stevedm

...is that the people who are crowding the beaches are the same people who are saying they can't come back to work for fear of COVID 19...

Whilst the  Covid situation may be highlighting the issue of poor employee relations I wouldn't say it's the cause.

If the protective measures at work are effective then they should reasonably be expected to work. However if there's a question of the effectiveness of the measures, and this has left you of the opinion that if someone takes a risk in their own time at the beach that this means they must also take a similar risk on my time for which I'm paying them, i'd think again. I've never seen a regulatory interpretation anywhere that follows this logic in that way, and even if I were very confident I'd got a shirker using it as a cute excuse I'd need to be exceptionally confident before playing it tough with a pandemic which has killed >40,000 and for which government guidance has been all over the place.

I might also reflect on this.... if they are such a shirker should I not have addressed this in however long I employed them before Covid?... or could I live with this now but reslove to address it properly (proportionately and fairly) when the chaos subsides?

Originally Posted by: stevedm

They do have the power to detain people who are not complying with lawful instructions given in the execution of The Health Protection (COVID-19) Regulations...

Perhaps you could enlighten us with the actual legal text of these powers of detention?

All I can see is: 

7.  During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people

(9) Where a relevant person considers that three or more people are gathered together in contravention of regulation 7, the relevant person may—

(a) direct the gathering to disperse; (b) direct any person in the gathering to return to the place where they are living; (c) remove any person in the gathering to the place where they are living.

as you haven't provided a reference it is pretty hard to see where you got that from...mine as I am sure I stated before comes from The Health Protection Corona Virus Regulations 2020...

You mean the revoked regulations

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020 (revoked)?

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/129/contents

Must admit to be unable to find your original reference The Health Protection (Covid-19) Regulations....

Legualstion UK threw back "Your title search for Health Protection Covid-19 in Primary and Secondary Legislation has returned no results."

As the post was about restriction of liberty it was more appropriate to look at the more recent:

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/contents​​​​​​​

Edited by user 06 June 2020 11:39:21(UTC)  | Reason: added links to government publications

Can people still be fined for not adhering to 2m social distancing rule?

Originally Posted by: stevedm

Just because you can’t google it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It hasn’t been revoked. Check legitimate sources. And stop making daily fail comments it isn’t helpful or professional.

Pretty sure my post indicates by its hyperlinks I am looking at Legislation UK the web site operated by the National Archives on behalf of HM Gov and not merely Googling - IMHO this is a very legitimate source even more so given your follow up post takes us to the exact same digital library but not unfortunately to an individual publication that contains your earlier assertion of police detention powers.

If you bothered with the first reference hyperlink I providied to the National Archives the publication as you re-named it has the word revoked in brackets after its title - S.I. 2020 No. 129.