I have received a number of complaints that a member of staff has been coming to work with a bad dose of flu and passing it around the office. Should I have a policy in place for this scenario, and can I force this employee to go home and stay at home until fully recovered?

You are very unlikely to be acting unlawfully if you ask the member of staff to go home and stay at home until fully recovered, provided that you pay them for all of the time they are at home.

Salaried employees are entitled to be paid their salary if they make themselves available for work, irrespective of whether they actually perform any work. As your staff member would not be attending on your instructions, she would still technically be making herself available and therefore entitled to pay. Therefore, you might want to think about asking her to do some work from home rather than paying her to do nothing at all.

Other than pay, the only other legal issue likely to be relevant is the