With the UK back in lockdown, what options are there for businesses with staff who are home-schooling while working from home?
The advice in this article is up-to-date as of 5 January 2021. We will update it as the situation develops.
Working parents up and down the country will have been listening intently to the Prime Minister’s broadcast on Monday 4th January, when he announced the third National Lockdown.
With schools having switched to online learning (except for the children of key workers, and vulnerable students) until at least the February half term, parents face a further period of worrying about childcare arrangements and home-schooling.
Many parents found the juggle really difficult and exhausting last time, even with employers who could be flexible about when their hours were worked. There is some relief for those with younger children as early years childcare provision remains open for now.
How can employers support staff that are home-schooling?
For employers trying to “keep calm and carry on” with managing your businesses as productively as possible, our advice is to have early conversations with staff.
Ensure managers are reaching out to team members proactively, as soon as possible this week, so that potential other options and/or support that people may need can be discussed.
If you have a HR manager or HR team in your business, could they telephone all those with children of school age to check in, and discuss further if they are struggling or have any needs they want to discuss?
What are the options for employers in light of the latest national lockdown rules?
Homeworking
Government advice is clear that people may only leave their home for work if they cannot reasonably work from home (with the exceptions for those in sectors such as key workers, critical national infrastructure, construction or manufacturing). At this point, probably every parent who can reasonably work from home is already doing so.
Furlough
It is clear that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) offers one solution. While it may not be feasible in all situations, parents who can’t work because of a lack of childcare can be furloughed. This is as long as an employee meets the other criteria for the scheme (such as being on the employer’s PAYE payroll by 30 October 2020).
Remember too that under the current CJRS workers can be furloughed on a part-time basis, which makes this option more flexible.
As an employer you must however obtain agreement from the employee before starting a period of furlough, as some employees may not accept the 80% pay that the scheme provides for hours not worked. For more information on furlough please see here.
Employees may also ask you if they can go on furlough – as was mentioned by the Prime Minister in his address. If so, as an employer you are within your rights to reject that request (for example if there is clearly still plenty of work to be done). However, we do recommend having a discussion to understand the employee’s needs in the short term, and explore other potential solutions, rather than just saying no. This will help keep morale, loyalty and productivity at this tricky time.
What other options are there for staff that are home-schooling?
Clearly each workplace will be different but do consider:
Flexible working
Could you temporarily (at least) offer greater flexible working (for example flexibility on start/end times) to enable your teams to work and manage home-schooling as best they can?
Reduction in hours
Could you agree a temporary reduction to hours to enable the employee to balance work and childcare better for a short period? This could be standalone by simply agreeing a reduction in hours and pay for that employee, or under the flexible furlough arrangements.
Support bubbles
Encourage or ask your employee to consider forming a support bubble with another person or family to provide childcare. This is allowed under the new rules.
Emergency time off
There is also the legal right for employees to take emergency time off for dependents. This isn’t designed to cover an extended period and is unpaid.
It is not intended to allow a parent to provide childcare but it may give an employee a bit of short term leeway to arrange alternative options – a grandparent or other adult may still be an option in some cases (depending on support bubble arrangements for each particular household).
Parental leave
Parental leave is also a statutory right but again, this would be unpaid.
There are also legal minimum requirements including length of service, notice and how the leave is taken (in particular blocks of one week; and four weeks per year per child). This is unlikely to be as popular as furlough but could be something an employee has to do if an employer refuses to furlough them and they cannot work due to childcare needs.
Holiday
Finally, holiday. We advise using this with care.
Employers probably won’t have enough time to give the required notice to force holiday to be taken so this would need to be with the agreement of your employee. The notice requirement if you want to force the employee to take holiday is 2x the length of the holiday you want them to take. Also, be wary of leaving employees without holiday (where they can truly take rest) later in the year, as this may be a long haul otherwise.
Summary
Clearly another big lockdown presents considerable challenges for employers and their staff, but we are arguably all better prepared this time.
Having lived through this before we should now be able to work through the options together, to ensure that business continues as effectively as possible while parents manage their childcare responsibilities and sanity over the coming weeks / months.
Our experienced team of legal advisors in our Employment team have been assisting employers on these issues throughout the last ten months. If you want to discuss any of the options set out in this article, please do get in touch.