A:You may be able to. Within the Working Time Regulations (which for the first time gave employees a legal right to paid holiday) there are rules about the notice employees and employers have to give each other for periods of holidays.
As an employer, if you require employees to take holiday on a specific day you must give them twice as much notice as the length of the holiday. For example, if you require them to take one week's holiday, you must give your employees two weeks' notice.
If you are deliberating this course of action, you should be aware of some other considerations. In the first place, you will need to check that your own contracts of employment do not prevent you from insisting that workers take holiday at a specific time by, for example, stating that all holidays need to be mutually agreed by employees and their managers.
Even if your contracts permit you to take such action, it may create other, very practical problems. For example, what would you do if some employees had already used up all their holiday entitlement?
In this situation, unless their contracts provided otherwise, you would have no right to force them to take unpaid holiday. That would leave you with the potentially unsatisfactory situation of treating employees in differing fashions – not the ideal way to build a trusting and satisfied workforce.
Q: Can someone refuse to work on site if they say that the weather is too hot?
A: There is no legislation within the UK that gives guidance on maximum working temperatures. But as an employer you have a requirement under the Health & Safety at Work Act to provide a workplace that is safe and without risk to health – and temperature can be a part of this.
It is your responsibility to conduct a risk assessment and take whatever steps are necessary to protect your workers from any hazards. In a situation with very high temperatures, it would be wise to ensure that workers have easy access to plenty of safe drinking water and perhaps supplies of salt. You may need to provide extra breaks and ensure there is a shady rest area.
If you have taken all these steps, your employees will have no justifiable reason to refuse to work on site. But as a good employer you should ensure that these matters are discussed with your workers, or perhaps their safety representatives, so that the situation does not reach the stage where employees think of refusing to work.
Source
Construction Manager
