Working in a heatwave: how hot is too hot to work?

The Met Office has issued its first ever red extreme heat warn­ing in expec­ta­tion of the UK heat­wave reach­ing its peak on Mon­day and Tues­day.  

The nation­al weath­er ser­vice has rec­om­mend­ed mak­ing “sub­stan­tial changes in work­ing prac­tices and dai­ly rou­tines”, with tem­per­a­tures in Lon­don and the South of Eng­land poten­tial­ly ris­ing to 40C. This would top the high­est ever record­ed UK tem­per­a­ture of 38.7C, in Cam­bridge in July 2019. 

With the mer­cury ris­ing, many peo­ple have been left won­der­ing whether there is a max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture that peo­ple can be expect­ed to work in. But no such laws are cur­rent­ly in place. 

James Willis, head of employ­ment law at Stevens­drake Solic­i­tors, says: “A num­ber of myths have arisen over the years around the notion that there are strict max­i­mum and min­i­mum tem­per­a­tures beyond which employ­ees can­not be required to work. How­ev­er, no such restric­tion has ever been intro­duced.”  

An Ear­ly Day Motion to set a max­i­mum work­place tem­per­a­ture of 30C – or 27C for those doing stren­u­ous work – was recent­ly tabled in Par­lia­ment and has so far been signed by more than 40 MPs. But cur­rent­ly, the law is much hard­er to pin down, with employ­ers only required to pro­vide a “rea­son­able” work­place tem­per­a­ture.  

“What is ‘rea­son­able’ will depend on the cir­cum­stances of each case,” Willis adds. 

Law on working in hot conditions

Despite the fact there is no guid­ance for a max­i­mum work­place tem­per­a­ture lim­it, employ­ers will have to be aware of any health and safe­ty law. 

This requires organ­i­sa­tions to keep the tem­per­a­ture at a com­fort­able lev­el and pro­vide clean and fresh air. 

The Health and Safe­ty Exec­u­tive (HSE) rec­om­mends that employ­ers should “con­sult with employ­ees or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to estab­lish the means to cope with high tem­per­a­tures”.  

If the tem­per­a­ture becomes uncom­fort­ably hot, employ­ers should take all rea­son­able mea­sures to achieve a more bear­able tem­per­a­ture, accord­ing to HSE. This could include pro­vid­ing desk fans, shad­ing win­dows or mov­ing work­sta­tions away from direct sun­light. 

Organ­i­sa­tions that fail to take suf­fi­cient mea­sures to make work­ing tem­per­a­tures more com­fort­able could find them­selves falling foul of their health and safe­ty respon­si­bil­i­ties.  

Under the lat­est red alert, the Met Office warns that “pop­u­la­tion-wide adverse health effects” could be expe­ri­enced, not lim­it­ed to those most vul­ner­a­ble to extreme heat. This means that employ­ers will also need to be con­scious of Sec­tion 44 of the Employ­ment Rights Act. 

Joseph Lap­pin, head of employ­ment and part­ner at law firm Stew­arts, explains that the act “pro­vides a right for employ­ees to stay at home if they rea­son­ably believe that going to work places them at risk of seri­ous and immi­nent dan­ger”.  

He adds: “An employ­er who refus­es to pay an employ­ee who refus­es to turn up to work, cit­ing dan­ger­ous tem­per­a­tures, may well find itself on the receiv­ing end of an employ­ment claim.”

How can employers make hot working conditions more comfortable?

With heat­waves becom­ing increas­ing­ly com­mon in the UK, employ­ers will have to con­sid­er the actions they can take to pro­vide a safe work­ing envi­ron­ment dur­ing peri­ods of hot weath­er. 

For those in offices with­out air-con­di­tion­ing facil­i­ties, now may be the time to invest.  

In addi­tion to its air-con­di­tioned HQ, HR soft­ware com­pa­ny Char­lieHR will be advis­ing staff to avoid com­mut­ing dur­ing busier peri­ods and will be hand­ing out ice creams and ice lol­lies to those com­ing into work. 

Peo­ple and tal­ent man­ag­er Fino­la Rance claims that the busi­ness will also be widen­ing the scope of its well­be­ing and learn­ing bud­gets, allow­ing staff to use them to sub­sidise trav­el to and from the office on Mon­day and Tues­day, book a co-work­ing space to avoid trav­el, and enjoy air con­di­tion­ing or buy a fan to keep cool while work­ing from home.

Com­pa­nies will need to demon­strate more flex­i­bil­i­ty than usu­al, too, accord­ing to Lime­light HR founder Sal­ly Bendt­son. This could involve chang­ing the hours peo­ple work so they can com­mute at cool­er and less busy times, relax­ing any for­mal dress codes or allow­ing peo­ple to work from home, if that will be more com­fort­able for them. 

She adds: “If the organ­i­sa­tion has no air con­di­tion­ing in the office and no access to ways of cool­ing peo­ple down, it might have to tell peo­ple not to come in or, if it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly bad on the day, the employ­er might have to be open to send­ing peo­ple home.” 

For those who are not work­ing in an office envi­ron­ment, there will be addi­tion­al chal­lenges. “It’s real­ly dif­fi­cult, espe­cial­ly if peo­ple are work­ing out­side under the sun,” Bendt­son says. “Employ­ers should make sure staff are cov­ered up as much as pos­si­ble and be sure to add in extra rest breaks.” 

Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion should be paid to those who are more vul­ner­a­ble, whether because of their age or any health con­di­tions, and those that are preg­nant. Bendt­son claims that, in such cir­cum­stances, a risk assess­ment can be use­ful.