A company with limited resources may balk at hiring a professional cleaning service. So should workers be expected to help?
Attorneys say there’s no reason why not, except of course if there’s a collective bargaining agreement in place that prohibits such requests, said Lisa Coppola, an employment attorney with The Coppola Firm in Buffalo.
“For a non-union workplace, it’s perfectly acceptable to ask employees to take part in sanitizing and disinfecting their areas, and even having a designated person who takes care of high-touch or common areas,” she said.
But from a best-practices standpoint, however, Coppola said it makes better sense to hire a professional cleaning company from a risk management perspective - just in case someone comes back and says the company shirked its duties by trying to save a buck.
“We don’t know whether workers’ comp is going to be available for Covid-related clams, but I’m already seeing third-party claims that I contracted this at Walmart or my lawyer’s office,” she said. “It’s going to be incumbent on the workplace to say they acted reasonably. So having that periodic deep-clean, I think goes a long way toward protecting that business.”
And if you do ask employees to do the cleaning, don’t have terribly high expectations. Think of how often people take responsibility for loading and unloading a dishwasher in a typical office setting.
“These are onerous guidelines and it’s not as simple as having a black letter rule telling people you have to clean,” said Kevin Wicka, a partner at Tarantino Law Firm who specializes in employment law.
“I wouldn’t recommend an employer telling an employee they have to do a general cleaning of the office,” he said. “I would recommend having an external cleaner come in. Unfortunately, there is a lot of additional expense that is occurring right now.”
If a company appoints staffers to take on that task, they do need to be mindful of employers who may have medical conditions with a chemical sensitivity and consider appropriate accommodations for those individual workers.