7. Best Practices
Employers are recommended to include in their internal regulations provisions that allow them to implement specific rules during exceptional situations (such as restricting access to specific areas, requiring employees to take additional safety measures, limit contact between employees). The newly included provisions should be general enough to be able to be enforced in different types of situations but also specific enough to be useful when exceptional situations might arise.
It is recommended for employers to negotiate with employees individualised working programs (the employee starts the working program at different hours) or uneven working programs (the employee works for a different number of hours each day, within the limits of the 40 hours/working week), in order to limit contact between employees and the time spent in common spaces.
Teleworking, if possible, should continue even after the epidemic situation is no longer urgent. This practice in the long-term can be used as a cost cut measure as the company will require smaller workspaces.
A good practice is to use stable work teams for specific assignments and to limit the interaction between work teams. In person meetings should only be organised if absolutely mandatory. During collective negotiations the negotiating teams should be limited to fewer participants for each meeting.
As mentioned the employers can limit work-related travel to only essential and urgent cases and they can also postpone training or identify training options that can be done through electronic means.
When hiring new employees it is recommended to use the maximum legal trial period, as during a trial period an employee may be terminated without cause. In addition, it is recommendation is to use fixed-term employment if possible.
