Clifford Chance
As with many businesses, you will no doubt be considering your return to work strategy for your offices. You probably already have an internal taskforce or focus group charged with putting together the plan as the situation evolves over the coming weeks and months.
Given the legal position regarding a relaxation of lockdown requirements is rapidly evolving and in different ways in different countries, our pan-European, APAC and US network has come together to offer a unique digital toolkit which aims to provide you with an overview of the key legal issues which your business needs to consider in the coming weeks and months.
Key issues
The toolkit covers the below topics in detail.
Health and safety laws, employment laws and Covid-19 governmental guidance
We answer some pressing questions including whether there is a specific obligation to conduct a formal risk assessment, whether employees have the right to withdraw from their employment if they are concerned about their health and safety, whether testing and screening is mandatory and whether there is any emergency legislation regarding holiday carry over.
This covers 17 jurisdictions including Australia, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Spain, the UK and the US.
Data privacy
We are aware many global employers are considering testing and screening which will involve the handling of health data which in many countries will be special category of sensitive personal data.
Before employers embark on testing and screening they need to consider the data privacy issues. We seek to provide an overview by region (APAC, US and Europe) of the key issues which employers should be considering when handling health data over the coming weeks and months.
Landlord and tenant obligations
We provide an overview in respect of landlord and tenant obligations for the same 17 jurisdictions referred to above, which is particularly important for businesses that operate as landlords either as a primary or secondary business acknowledging the perspective of a landlord is very different from the perspective of an employer.
