- A13. No. There is no obligation on employers to grant employees additional paid time off to look after children.
Employees are entitled to time off work for dependents in an unexpected event or emergency. The amount of time off an employee takes to care for a dependent must be reasonable for the situation. There is no statutory right to pay for this time off; however, some employers might offer pay depending on the employment contract or workplace policy. Employees also have an entitlement to take unpaid parental leave for up to 4 weeks per child per year.
Employees may request to use some of their annual leave entitlement to look after their children during the school closures, either in blocks or spread over a number of weeks. If an employer exercises its discretion to grant employees additional paid time off, it is prudent to do so fairly and in a nondiscriminatory manner.
Following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement on 18 March 2020, and given the unusual circumstances, employees and employers may wish to be flexible in how they approach working from home. If someone says they can work, whether their full hours or part-time hours around childcare, employers may want to arrange to pay their employees their normal or potentially pro-rata salary (i.e. reducing hours (and pay) by agreement). For example, employees may wish to split working time and childcare with partners and/or share childcare with other parents. Some employers may be willing to allow employees to work from home on full pay with the exception that they do as much work as they can. Again, it is prudent to take this approach fairly and in a nondiscriminatory way. Employers and employees will need to agree on a working pattern that will work for both the business and the employee.
It is important that the employer highlight that the new working arrangements will be kept under review. Also, when putting together options for employees, employers may want to consider whether their home working policies need to be updated, specifically if they currently contain a restriction on home working whilst looking after children.