COVID-19 in an employment law perspective – FAQ

Your employer can dismiss you. However, your terms of termination must always be respected.

As an employer, you always have obligations to your employees in addition to the general duty of care. Especially now, the obligations in section 39(1) of the Working Environment Act are emphasized, which contains rules on avoiding disease infection. This could be through available hand sanitizer for all employees, and that the sick and potentially ill employees must be sent home.

No matter what illness is caused by your employees going home sick, the general rules for pay during illness follow. That is, if you have employees who do not normally receive pay during illness, the same applies during COVID-19. Remember you can still require a doctor’s certificate from your sick employee.

As an employer, you can always send an employee home – but this is with regular pay. If a doctor or authorities recommend that your employee should stay at home, your employee will still be entitled to pay. Your employee cannot choose to stay at home without permission from a doctor, authority or employer. If your employee still chooses to stay away for fear of COVID-19, it is absence without a valid reason. This can ultimately lead to a dismissal or a dismissal of the employee.

As a general rule, you must not ask about what is wrong with your employee when he or she is on sick leave. However, it is the exception that if the illness has a significant impact on the employee’s ability to work, you can ask further questions. This also applies if the disease has a major impact on the workplace and a possible infection. Whether you are allowed to ask or not must therefore be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

If your employee is not sick but has been sent home in quarantine, you can require your employee to work from home. Contact Raadgiver.dk if your employee lives abroad (e.g. Sweden) and therefore has to work from home abroad, or if your employees are not salaried employees.

As a general rule, as a worker, you cannot decide over your employees’ free time. However, if your employees cause themselves self-inflicted illness (by intent or gross negligence), you can refrain from paying salary during illness according to section 5(1) of the Salaried Employees Act. A private trip to a place where the authorities recommend that you should not be in can in the given situation be considered gross negligence. You can always follow the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ recommendations at https://um.dk/rejse-og-ophold/rejse-til-udlandet/rejsevejledninger/. The case must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, as there may be circumstances that speak for and against.

As a general rule, your employer can impose holiday on you in accordance with the rules of the Holiday Act (unless otherwise agreed in, for example, a collective agreement). The Holiday Act states that holidays that are not summer holidays must be given 1 month’s notice. However, there is an exception that this can be deviated from if special circumstances prevent it, or if the notices of the Holiday Act have been agreed to be deviated from. Contact Raadgiver.dk to get an assessment of your given situation.

If you feel uncomfortable going to work (e.g. if you are in a special risk group), you must go to your doctor and inform them of this. If your doctor assesses the same as you, you must enter into a dialogue with your employer to see if you can find a sustainable solution for both parties together.