Reopening is firmly here, but so is the pandemic still, meaning businesses must take precautions to prevent exposing employees and the public to infection. Many stores are limiting occupancy, reducing hours, requiring masks, among other measures\u2014usually taking multiple simultaneous precautions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If employees fail to follow your new health and safety guidelines, your course is pretty clear: unless they have a reasonable objection like requiring an accommodation, employees must follow safety protocols or face appropriate progressive discipline. What\u2019s less clear is an employer\u2019s option when the reluctant party isn\u2019t an employee. What happens when a customer refuses to wear a mask, for example? Or a supplier, vendor, or visitor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You still have to avoid discrimination based on a prohibited ground, and you may have to\u00a0account for accommodations, but that still leaves you a lot of leeway to enforce your rules. The pandemic is a real and serious threat, especially with businesses reopening, so allowing customers or other visitors to the workplace to flout your rules places everyone at risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Employees and customers will judge organizations for their behaviour during this crisis, and appearing not to take the danger seriously could have serious consequences for your organization\u2019s reputation and trust\u2014even if no one actually gets sick. The more seriously we all take the danger, the less likely it is that governments will have to institute additional lockdowns, and the greater our chance of preventing further illness or loss of life. By making small collective sacrifices to our comfort and convenience, we can lessen the shocks of this pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some jurisdictions, masks in public spaces have become mandatory through regulations, including city by-laws. While this can help take some of the responsibility off the employer, you could still encounter someone who refuses to wear a mask for a number of reasons, and you or your employees might need to have a difficult conversation. It can be even more challenging for employees to deal with if they aren\u2019t confident in how to handle these types of situations. Download our\u00a0Guide to Dealing with Non-employees Refusing to Wear PPE\u00a0<\/a>for tips on how you can keep everyone safe\u2014and keep the peace\u2014when customers refuse to follow safety guidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Citation Canada, formerly HRdownloads, uses reasonable efforts to maintain this site\/blog and its Services in an up-to-date fashion, it does not warrant the completeness, timeliness or accuracy of any information contained on this site\/blog or any of its Services, whether in English or French, and may make changes thereto at any time in its sole discretion without notice. All information and Services provided by Citation Canada, formerly HRdownloads, are provided to members and\/or users \u201cas is\u201d, \u201cwith all faults,\u201d \u201cas available\u201d and at the sole risk of members and\/or users. Our human resources information and recommendations are based on seasoned, best practice field experience and should not be construed as legal advice.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reopening is firmly here, but so is the pandemic still, meaning businesses must take precautions to prevent exposing employees and the public to infection. Many stores are limiting occupancy, reducing hours, requiring masks, among other measures\u2014usually taking multiple simultaneous precautions. If employees fail to follow your new health and safety guidelines, your course is pretty…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":4839,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citationcanada.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}