The Government projects that new cases could top 100,000 per day by August 2009. The disruption to local businesses could be quite discerning.

Employers need to focus on the following three areas when preparing for pandemic flu:

• Their duty to protect the health and safety of their employees;
• Dealing with high staff absence – employee sickness, people choosing to stay at home through fear, employees looking after sick children or relatives, and malingerers.
• Possible suspension of “normal working practices” and the impact of this may have on the contracts of employment.

Reverting back to the five key considerations, how can your business fulfil these requirements?

1. Prominently display notices in the workplace encouraging employees to wash hands and use tissues. It can also be as simple as ensuring soap and tissues are kept in lavatories.

2. Circulate memorandums to notify employees of the symptoms of swine flu, and provide the National Pandemic Flu Service Hotline number.

3. Consideration will need to be given to suspending the “normal practices” around return to work, sick pay and dependant leave.

While a company sickness policy may require an employee to return to work as soon as they are feeling well enough, the person suffering from pandemic flu should not return to work until certified by a doctor.

In considering whether such leave should be paid or unpaid, your discretion will come into play and whenever this discretion is exercised, you need to be mindful of favouring one employee over another, which could potentially expose your business to a claim of discrimination or breach of trust of confidence in the contract of employment.

Your business may end up having to be more generous about giving time off to employees caring for dependants than they would otherwise be.  If dependants become very seriously ill and care arrangements are hard to come by as a result of the pandemic, it would be unrealistic for employers to expect people to take the minimum entitlements.

Concerns about malingerers may also need to give way to the overriding need to prevent the spread of the disease.  If, however, you have evidence to suggest that an employee is abusing the position to their advantage and remaining off whilst not genuinely ill, then you may need to consider the disciplinary procedure against that employee.

However, we urge you to tread carefully when dealing with this matter. While, the normal course of events may lead to disciplinary action, the importance of enforcing the rules may lessen in comparison to the crisis.

We recommend that you circulate a memo with any specific adaptations to procedures and policies.  Inform staff and consult with any recognised body in the workplace (for example, Trade Unions).

4. It is also possible that healthy people might be told to stay at home to limit the spread of infection. For some employees, home working may be an option, although you should consult with the employee on whether it is viable.

5. It may be worthwhile having a contingency plan for staff and identifying key staff with interchangeable skills within other parts of the business.  However, you should review their contract of employment to ascertain whether you have the right to redeploy, albeit on a temporary basis.

For more information on protecting your business against the impact of swine flu then please contact Mark McKeating of Hill Dickinson LLP on 0151 600 8609.

Swine flu could have serious consequences for small and medium size businesses so ensuring your business is properly prepared is essential.

Ministers have warned that in a worst case scenario, 100,000 people could contract swine flu every day by the end of August, with 1 in 8 employees forced to take time off work. Should these projections come to bear, the sheer number of people affected will undoubtedly have an impact on business productivity and the wider economy.

The British Chambers of Commerce is hosting a live WebTV show on Tuesday 28th July at 11am to discuss the current situation, how businesses should prepare for swine flu and how you should react if it hits your business.

Joining presenter Ian Collins in the studio are Bruce Mann, Head of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat at the Cabinet Office and David Frost, the Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce. They will also be joined representatives from two businesses – Robert Stead and Sue Hill – who will discuss how their businesses are coping with the crisis.

This is an excellent opportunity to give businesses a chance to share their own contingency plans and ideas they have implemented to deal with the spread of swine flu in the workplace.

To submit a question live to the panel visit www.britishchambers.org.uk on Tuesday 28th July at 11:00-11.30am.