Question: I run a smallish business with only eighteen employees. I keep hearing about the effect of HIV/AIDS on business but I have no idea what I should be doing about it. In any case all my staff appear to be in good health. What advice can you give me?

Answer: If you have eighteen employees, statistics suggest that there may be three or four infected with the HI virus. If infected employees are in an early stage of the illness they are unlikely to be showing any signs of infection as yet. However, if they are ignorant of their status and are therefore not acting appropriately, you may find in a year or two, that several of your key workers become ill at more or less the same time. For this and other important reasons it is very desirable that all your staff are provided with HIV information and are given the opportunity to be voluntarily counselled and tested to establish whether they are HIV positive. It is against the law for any company to test employees without voluntary informed consent (1) practice pre-employment testing or
(2) to test existing employees without their informed consent (voluntary agreement to be tested after appropriate pre-test counselling).

Having said that, you do need informed advice as to how to go about encouraging your staff to access voluntary counselling and testing. To begin with it must be recognized that staff have the right to full confidentiality about their status. In other words, even if they test positive, they are not under any obligation to disclose this to you.

Often the best way to begin is to ask a qualified person to meet with you so that you can together agree on a HIV Workplace Policy which includes an education strategy suited to the particular needs of your business. The Workplace policy needs to be formulated by a task group which is fully representative in terms of the management, workers, shop stewards and union representatives. The next step might be for you to access experts who could implement your HIV/AIDS information education for your workforce outlining the main issues involved in HIV counselling and testing. The purpose of this is to inform and to correct misinformation whilst encouraging individuals to scrutinize their own attitudes and behaviour in order to make an informed decision as to whether or not they should take an HIV test.

You need to be quite clear as to what your policy is with regard to HIV positive staff who are at all stages of the infection and the implications for other staff members and the company. The aims of an HIV/AIDS programme should include minimising the risk of infection as well as keeping already infected staff in a state of good health.

Legally, employees may not have their services terminated just because they are HIV positive. As long as they are fit enough to carry out their duties they are entitled to remain in employment. Only if they are in an advanced stage of illness which is affecting them severely may it be justified to board them on grounds of incapacity and at that stage they would be entitled to the normal agreed benefits. Also staff may not refuse to work together with staff members who have disclosed their HIV positive status.

Space allows us to deal with only some of the issues involved. For future help we suggest that you contact one of the organizations which offer advice and counselling for small and medium sized businesses. Information is available from ATICC.