Coronavirus Vaccinations and the workplace

New research by Acas has found that a quarter of British employers have not been giving their staff paid time off for Covid-19 vaccinations and have no plans to do so in the future.

Furthermore, a similar percentage are refusing to provide full company sick pay to staff who are off work sick due to vaccine side effects.

On the plus side, the arbitration service found that 59% have been giving staff paid time off while 4% have not been doing it but plan to do so.

Its advice is that employers should support staff to get the vaccine once it is offered to them. This support could include ensuring employees have paid time off for Covid-19 vaccine reasons.

Acas Chief Executive Susan Clews said: “It’s in businesses best interests to have a vaccine policy that supports staff to take time off as fully vaccinated workers are less likely to need longer periods of time off work to recover from Covid-19.”

To support staff to get the vaccine, Acas advice is that employers may want to consider paid time off for vaccination appointments and paying staff their usual rate of pay if they are off sick with vaccine side effects.

While some organisations may have a review or ‘trigger’ point to keep track of sickness absence for their staff, employers could consider not counting vaccine-related time off sick as part of this absence record system, Acas suggests.

Should digital Right to work checks continue permanently?

Over 300,000 people a week could have been delayed in starting work if the Home Office had refused to allow Right to Work (RTW) checks to be conducted digitally now that the final stage of unlocking has been delayed.

This warning came from REC (the Recruitment and Employment Confederation) and refers to the fact that, since 30 March 2020, digital RTW checks have allowed employers to hire new staff without having to meet them in person to check documents.

This system has, the Confederation argues, kept people safe, saved companies time and resources during the pandemic and helped to slow the spread of Covid-19. It also levelled the playing field between UK and foreign nationals by allowing digital checks for both, rather than just for foreign nationals.

The Home Office seems to have agreed as it has now announced that digital right to work checks will be extended until the end of August.

It was, it said, “reviewing whether there are changes we can make to the right to work scheme to increase the digital checking aspects, including through the use of specialist technologies”.

The REC was quite clear what those changes should be with Chief Executive Neil Carberry welcoming the new concession but arguing that the next logical step should be a move to a permanent digital system.

“It makes no sense for Government to shoot themselves in the foot and return to mandating in-person checks when the use of digital checks has been a success story of the pandemic,” Deputy CEO Kate Shoesmith said.

She also highlighted the contradiction of the Government seeking to return to mandating in-person checks for UK nationals, thereby disadvantaging UK jobseekers in the labour market, while also trying to incentivise employers to not rely on workers from abroad.