What’s the issue?
- A rapidly changing climate is exposing the world’s most vulnerable workers to a host of new risks, from increased health risks, job insecurity, and economic and psychological stress.
- It is estimated that climate change is already impacting over 2.7bn workers (approximately 70% of the total global workforce).
- Extreme temperatures increase the likelihood of heat illness, cold stress, and long-term health impacts.
- Unsafe temperatures can lower efficiency, increase errors, and disrupt work schedules.
- Workers in high-risk environments face income loss, fewer opportunities, and heightened vulnerability.
- Workers in lower-resource countries and outdoor or physically demanding roles are disproportionately affected.
Current legislative/regulatory position:
Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992
- Regulation 7 requires employers to ensure that "During working hours, the temperature in all workplaces inside buildings shall be reasonable."
Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (1974), supported by the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
- Establishes that employers must take reasonable steps to manage temperature-related risks.
Construction (Design and Management) Regulations
- Requires reasonable workplace temperatures for indoor areas of construction sites.
Approved Code of Practice
- Sets non-legally binding temperatures and recommends at least 16°C for sedentary work and 13°C for physically demanding work.
Trades Union Congress (TUC)
- Recommends a maximum of 30°C, or 27°C for strenuous work, and suggests that action be required when temperatures exceed 24°C.
What’s our position?
Extremes of temperature, both heat and cold, pose a significant and escalating risk to workers, not only in the UK but around the world.
As climate change progresses, new challenges emerge that affect worker safety, productivity, and wellbeing.
These challenges are not limited to physical health; they also include increased psychological stress, job insecurity, and economic vulnerability, particularly for workers in outdoor, physically demanding, or low-resource environments.
Climate change is already affecting an estimated 2.7 billion workers globally, roughly 70% of the global workforce, creating conditions that are unsafe, unpredictable, and in many cases preventable.
Without clear guidance and protections from governments and international bodies, workers are exposed to risks that can lead to heat illness, cold stress, accidents, and long-term health impacts, while businesses face reduced productivity and operational challenges.
We believe that workers have a fundamental right to protection from unsafe thermal conditions.
Temperature exposure should be recognised as both a workplace safety issue and a workplace wellbeing priority.
Where thermal conditions present a foreseeable risk to health, employers should be required to assess that risk and implement reasonably practicable controls.
Those controls should be triggered by clear guidance, informed by temperature but also by humidity, radiant heat, air movement, workload, PPE requirements and individual vulnerability.
Ensuring that all workers have access to safe, comfortable, and manageable working conditions is not optional; it is a shared responsibility that requires coordinated action from employers, governments, and international bodies.
While temperature provides a useful and easily understood indicator of potential risk, it should not be treated in isolation.
The severity of heat or cold stress depends on a combination of environmental conditions, the physical demands of work, clothing and PPE, duration of exposure and individual susceptibility.
We therefore support a risk-based approach that uses practical temperature trigger points to prompt assessment and control, rather than relying solely on rigid legal temperature limits that may not accurately reflect the level of risk.
Asks:
In our workplaces (For Employers):
- Develop and implement a Workplace Thermal Risk Management Policy that defines trigger temperatures, risk assessment requirements, escalation procedures and control measures for both heat and cold.
- The policy should recognise that thermal risk depends not only on air temperature but also humidity, radiant heat, air movement, workload, PPE and individual vulnerability.
- Institute ongoing risk assessments for thermal exposure across all worksites and job roles.
- Provide training for all workers operating in high-risk geographical areas on the symptoms of heat illness and emergency response.
- Provide clean drinking water at all workplaces and provide cooling or warming facilities, rest areas and recovery arrangements whenever thermal conditions reach defined action thresholds identified through risk assessment.
Across the UK (Government, policymakers and regulators):
UK Government
- Update the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations to include explicit protections against excessive heat and cold, supported by statutory guidance that establishes practical trigger temperatures and proportionate control measures rather than relying solely on fixed maximum or minimum limits.
- Recognise workplace temperature exposure as a climate justice and public health issue in national adaptation plans.
Develop a National Heat Resilience Strategy before the end of this Parliament, which incorporates worker protections for companies operating in the UK.
Health and Safety Executive
- Develop clear Approved Code of Practice and practical guidance on managing thermal risk, including action thresholds, control measures, acclimatisation, hydration, work-rest regimes, ventilation, PPE adaptation and protection of vulnerable workers.
Around the world:
- ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and WHO (World Health Organization) should develop internationally recognised standards for managing occupational thermal risk, incorporating environmental conditions, workload, clothing and physiological factors, together with evidence-based trigger values for employer action. Embed occupational thermal safety in national climate adaptation plans under the UNFCCC framework.
Media and Evidence Base:
Evidence Base:
Temperature in the workplace: Heat stress - HSE
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2023/06/01/come-rain-or-shine-adverse-weather-matters-for-our-health/
Heat at work: Implications for safety and health | International Labour Organization