If you can't WFH and your workplace closes...

[BlessedBeTheFruitCake]

What would happen? I'm sure it won't get to that stage (hopefully), but, if a workplace decided to shut down and it isn't the type of job that you are able to do from home what happens? Is it unpaid, enforced holiday, paid?

I know I was reading the other day that they can make it enforced holiday. Not sure re the other two options.i guess it greatly depends on who your employer is.

My assumption would be you would be paid SSP of £94 a week or take holidays. Can't think of a lot else other than unpaid leave. The whole system might need to change ie mortgage break

Why would it be SSP though? In the OP'S scenario she is well, it's just that her work is closed.

My work has said if they close we will still be going into work and given other tasks

Depends on the employer. Mine has announced we will be paid as normal. I’d guess bigger employers will be more likely to be able to afford this.

@ivykaty44 that surely depends on your job? There will be some workplaces where that is not possible and shutdown means exactly that - no one in the building.

DH is painter on building sites. More than likely they will all be laid off if they can't work so will probably have to see about signing on

Musicalmistress My team leader isn’t everyone’s boss.. I’m sure others will have different strategies and solutions

Yes I'm also wondering this.

I'm expecting not to be paid. I work for a small business manufacturing goods so if we're not working we won't get paid.

I have a child so will probably have to apply for benefits. I rent so should get my rent covered but it will be a big drop in income.

Depends on the employer, which is a shit situation I know.

My employer has repeatedly said we’ll be on full pay for having to self isolate or company shut downs (wfh isn’t currently possible in my role but they’re frantically trying to put systems in place for it).

But then it’s a big company with a generous sick pay policy anyway. For a small business who won’t be making money during a shut down, paying everyone full pay will potentially cause financial meltdown.

If there is a lockdown the government should step in to support people and businesses... but I wouldn’t put my trust in the current government to do anything meaningful about it tbh

I'm going to ask my work tomorrow about this actually as I am concerned that I won't be paid

If your contact states you can be temporarily laid off you can claim £29 a day for 5 days, that’s it, so yeah no money, I suppose you can’t claim SSP if your laid off either
I work in a non essential shop, if we are forced to close I don’t think I’ll get anything apart from the £29, it’s a small business

*contract

I work in a school as support staff. If the school closes to pupils it might well stay open to staff. Lots of jobs could be done, including invigilating exams in classrooms instead of the hall.

My former employer is office based, but would not be able to accommodate WFH - it's financial services, a large chunk of it is a call centre. There's no way it would work as staff would need equipment, software would need to be installed, all employees time is micromanaged for quality & accountability purposes, WFH would not be possible because of GDPR. However if the office does close - and I can anticipate that it probably will fairly soon, it will cause problems as the accounts will not be processed. I don't know if they will offer automatic payment holidays to all customers, I do know this would affect many hundreds of thousands of UK customers if they do close.

I run a small business where at least some of the employees have to be in work (manufacturing). We’ve just given our staff an extra week of paid sick leave (they already get a fairly generous amount).
If all our staff were off sick and we had to close, we would keep paying them for as long as possible, probably long enough for people to get better and come back to work. We would go without a salary to let that happen. We know that people live pay check to pay check and it would be an absolute last resort that we would expect our staff to go without.

We’ve also trained everyone to step in and do each other’s roles as much as possible and our office manager can work from home, so we should be ok even if we had to close for a couple of weeks. Our customers are mainly long standing and loyal and would understand if this happened.

And whilst we all ask for benefits to survive, Richard Branson asks for £7.5b to keep his company going....what about all the smaller business