COVID-19 Coronavirus Business Impact: ICO Issues Guidance On Workplace Testing

Many employers are working up their detailed plans for the return of staff to the workforce. In determining the arrangements they need to put in place to ensure employees' health and safety in the workplace, they will wish to take into account the recently issued Government guidance on safe working arrangements.

Testing does not form part of the Government's current recommendations. However, many employers are giving thought to whether they should conduct testing of employees in order to assist them in fulfilling their duty of care towards their employees to protect their health and safety - by ensuring so far as possible that, as employees return to the workplace, they are not exposed to colleagues who are infected with COVID-19. Employers may consider carrying out temperature or other checks as part of their health and safety measures - although taking employees' temperatures is generally acknowledged not to be a reliable test of whether a person has COVID-19 and