B.C. employers should ease worker worries over COVID road checks: expert

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — B.C.’s new efforts to limit travel between health regions may be causing concern for those who have to cross boundaries to get to work, and an HR expert says employers should be stepping up to ease these worries.

Premier John Hogan said British Columbians can expect an announcement Friday from Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth, who will issue orders which will restrict people’s ability to leave their health authority without a legitimate reason. Horgan said this will involve random road checks, but details about how people can prove their travel is essential, and what penalties people violating the orders have not been released.

Debbie Carreau, CEO and founder of Inspired HR, says employers should be doing what they can to support their staff to work from home.

“If you don’t need people to travel for work. Let them do zoom calls, let them postpone travel,” she says.

“I think a lot of employers have slowly started to bring people back into the office and now’s quite not quite the time yet to do that. If you don’t absolutely need to. We know people are tired and they want to go back to business as normal, we’re just not quite at that point yet.”

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Given that a lot of essential jobs can’t be done remotely, Carreau says proof of employment is something bosses should provide to workers who commute between health regions.

“First of all, I would encourage employers to make sure that they provide a letter on corporate letterhead, or a pay stub just so [CLIP]employees] don’t run into an uncomfortable situation. Make sure that the employees are set up with the tools that they need if questions are asked.” she says.

When it comes to workers who have to travel as part of their work, she says due diligence is more important now than ever.

“It’s always wise for employers to do their double checks. If they know they’re going to be road checked, make sure that employees are insured properly, and do all the other things that go along with being a responsible employer when you do have employees that are on the road.”