Do you have a fuel crisis policy?

Do you have a fuel crisis policy?

I’m joking of course.

I’m usually in favour of the application of common sense rather than policy writing for every possible workplace occurrence. Firstly, you can’t write a rule for everything, you would likely spend the rest of your working life thinking up what could go wrong. It doesn’t exactly scream of a working life of sunshine and rainbows.

How then do you deal with an employee without an applicable policy? There is no need to get tied into knots about it! It is a myth often peddled by serial disciplinary/grievance hardened workers or sometimes unions that if you do not have a policy to show someone has done something wrong, you can’t discipline them or expect a certain standard of behaviour.

Rubbish.

As an employer you can rely on judgement, common sense and expecting a reasonable standard of behaviour. You don’t need a policy for everything! Your disciplinary, attendance/sickness and grievance policies should in reality be well written enough to cope with most circumstances.

So what do you do in a fuel crisis without a fuel crisis policy? Communicate.

Let your employees know that there is an issue, what the issue is and how they are expected to respond to it. If they office based remind them that there is such a thing as public transport, that they should make efforts to plan ahead for journeys and perhaps limit nonessential travel.

If staff are double vaccinated, consider car share arrangements. It doesn’t need to be an immediate excuse to work from home or to not attend work.

Ultimately failure to attend work without good reason can be classed as a disciplinary offence. In their defence/mitigation the fuel crisis would likely be raised, so it is important to ensure a proper investigation has been done to see whether the employee has simply just decided not to attend work on a particular day, or has done everything they possibly could to get to work but failed.

The former would likely give grounds for a sanction. The latter, it would be highly unlikely if an employee has gone to varying efforts to attend work but failed through no fault of their own.

 

Do you need help updating your policies?  Contact us for a free consultation.