Holiday season | Can HR restrict employee Xmas travel?

The long-anticipated Christmas break is just a few weeks away, meaning employees will be looking forward to some time to unwind from the last year. For some, however, this may mean traveling around the country to see family and friends, or a trip away for a few days to recharge.

The New Year will likely see more workers take time off to use some of their accrued holiday from 2020, and with the national lockdown restrictions now lifted, they have more opportunities to travel around the UK for some well-deserved time off.

While Government guidelines still encourage people not to travel unless it is essential, it is no longer prohibited for anyone in England to leave their homes to take a trip. This also applies to international travel, reported TimeOut.

Due to this, many employers will likely start to worry that staff may choose to travel and begin to question whether they can limit this. According to Fiona W. Ong and Lindsey A. White, Employment Lawyers at Shawe Rosenthal LLP, the answer to this is “it’s complicated”. 

Writing in a blog post on Lexology, the duo stated that employers may require staff who choose to travel to take a test before returning to the workplace, adding that employers may also be able to deny an employee’s request for leave. They wrote in the post: “In addition, we believe that an employer may deny an employee’s request for leave (during which the employee would travel) based on the negative impact on the business if the leave were to be granted i.e. that following the leave, the employee would have to remain out of work for an additional 14 days.