Q: Do I have to pay staff who either leave work early or don’t come into work due to the weather. Please note I ask this question due to a staff member telling us he probably won’t be in if it’s bad weather.
Feb 04 2009
Answered by: Peter Done Ask a question
This will all come down to what your company normally does in these circumstances. Employees are only entitled in law to payment for work done. If they don’t do any work, then they won’t get paid.
It is worth looking at what work your employees can do if they are away from the office so if poor weather is anticipated, could you make arrangements for them to work remotely? This way you still get your work done and the weather cannot interfere with that. See what arrangements you can put in place in respect of working from home because you will not want to be in the position of having told your employees that they have to attend work and then getting a phone call to find out they have been involved in an accident due to the weather while trying to travel in.
Discuss with your employees about how they will make the time up if they are leaving early or arriving late so that they can make the decision about when they want to leave. Where possible, consider what flexibility you can afford in unusually adverse weather conditions. You will have to make allowances in the cases of people who travel around as part of their job that it will take them longer to travel between destinations in poor weather and you may need to alter their workload to take that into account.
Of course, there is another side to this question, which is can this employee genuinely not attend work. Do you have any other employees who live or travel through the area where this employee lives? If they can all make it into work without any difficulty then there would be no reason why he can’t. If your employee is absent without a good reason then this could be deemed unauthorised absence and he/she may be subject to disciplinary proceedings.
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