What You Need to Know to Lead Your Business Through COVID-19

by Carolyn Kick | Mar 20, 2020 | COVID-19 Resources

What New COVID-19 Legislation Means for Your Business

by Carolyn Kick | Mar 18, 2020 | COVID-19 Resources

The COVID-19 pandemic is a moment that will be written about in history books for centuries to come. The world hasn’t been united by a common cause in this way for quite some time. During this time, showing our collective strength and resilience as a business space while supporting each and every worker and their family is crucial to continuing our normal way of life.

Thankfully, the federal government has heard our requests for help and is significantly aiding this work with the proposed COVID-19 Relief Bill. In this post, we’ll explore what that Bill contains and what it means for business and HR leaders across the country.

Moving forward, we’ll explore:

• The expansion of FMLA (Family & Medical Leave Act)
• The Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act
• How the COVID-19 Relief Bill offsets employer expenses with tax credits
• Employee benefits administration guidance based on the Act
• A few best practices to help keep your business running and minimize costs associated with FMLA, paid sick leave, etc.

The COVID-19 Relief Bill Explained

The COVID-19 Relief Bill seeks to provide employers and employees with the economic and physical safety and security they need to survive and maintain some semblance of normalcy as the Coronavirus pandemic continues. In short, the Bill’s goals are to make it easier for employees to take paid sick time during the outbreak while also making it easier for employers to cover those costs.

What’s the Status of the Bill?

The COVID-19 Relief Bill has already been approved by the House of Representatives and by the Senate. The Bill must now be signed into law by President Trump, which he is expected to do so.

What Does the Bill Mean for Employers?

The biggest way the Relief Bill will impact your day-to-day as an employer is it requires expansion of your family and medical sick leave programs. With that said, the bill builds in backend tax credits to make up for this increased cost and productivity reduction for employers.

FMLA Expansion

The COVID-19 Relief Bill will expand the scope of FMLA requirements to require all employers with fewer than 500 employees and government agencies to allow up to 12 weeks of protected leave for employees who must:

• Comply with required or recommended quarantines
• Provide care to a family member observing a quarantine
• Provide care to a minor whose school or daycare facility is closed due to COVID-19

Under the expansion, up to the first fourteen days of leave can be unpaid, but after that, employees must receive 2/3 of their regular rate of pay.

The Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act

The COVID-19 Relief Bill requires employers with fewer than 500 employees and government agencies to provide employees with paid time off for:

• Self-quarantine due to Coronavirus diagnosis
• Time needed to obtain a test and diagnosis after exposure
• Quarantine compliance orders
• Providing care to a family member observing an above quarantine
• Provide care to a minor whose school or daycare facility is closed due to COVID-19

Employer Tax Credits

The government recognizes that the above expansions will cost businesses who are already feeling the pinch of COVID-19. As an employer, you’re eligible for the following tax credits to offset your losses:

• Wages for employees taking time off under the Act’s FMLA expansion and Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act will be counterbalanced with refundable payroll tax credits
• Sick leave credits up to $511/day per employee receiving pay while out sick
• Sick leave credits up to $200/day for employees taking leave to care for family members or minors whose schools/day care centers are closed

COVID-19 Employee Benefits Administration Concerns

Given the volume of people becoming sick, employee healthcare benefits administration must be a point of emphasis for all businesses in the coming weeks and months. Your HR department needs to become a valuable point-of-contact for employees looking to get answers about COVID-19, healthcare and testing accessibility, and what to do when they feel they might be getting sick.

Your HR team should be taking time to build out quick reference resources related to:

• How to access COVID-19 testing through your carriers
• How to extend employee coverage via COBRA if a long absence is necessary
• How employees can figure out if they qualify for partial or full disability at this time

Formalizing Your Response Plan

This pandemic has clarified and reinforced the need for emergency and crisis response plans across business. If you’re looking for some guidance to help you create a plan, be sure to check out our recent blog on the subject.

In general, you need to have a COVID-19 response plan that:

• Addresses your business’ unique pain points, challenges, and needs
• Establishes a response/leadership team who “own” the response
• Assesses your current strengths, weaknesses, exposures, etc.
• Articulates a formal, official communication strategy
• Creates official policies for continuing in-office and remote work

Communicating with Employees

Given the new protections created by the COVID-19 Relief Bill, it’s more important than ever to communicate with employees about what you expect from them, what they can expect from you, and how you’ll come together as a team to weather this storm (while remaining safe physical distance).

What You Need to Do for Employees

The first step is to open a dialogue with a clear, consistent, and compassionate voice. That means identifying official communication channels, assigning a point-person for communication, and disseminating as much relevant information as quickly as possible. You need to connect employees with:

• CDC & WHO guidance
• Employee benefits resources
• Resources they can use to apply for leave as needed
• The full text and digestible explanations of your COVID-19 policies and plan
• Information that helps them understand their role in the plan

It’s important to mention that your focus needs to be on facts and clarity. While teamwork and community spirit are crucial to bringing us through this public health crisis, your official communications should be serious, transparent, and focused on keeping your employees, business, and the public in general healthy.

What Employees Need to Do for You

You need to create a framework for employees to be honest with you. You are within your legal rights to demand that employees tell you they are feeling sick or to send somebody home if you suspect they have COVID-19.

If your employees are sick, they need to stay home. If an immediate family member is sick with COVID-19, the employee needs to stay home.

Employees absolutely need to stay away if they are or might be sick and use the proposed resources the COVID-19 Relief Bill creates. You need to plan for how you’ll make these expectations clear and enforce them.

Enabling Remote Work

One of the ways you can minimize FMLA and paid sick time requests is to embrace a remote work strategy that allows employees to continue productivity at home. With a great approach to remote work, you can actually maximize your team’s potential in new ways.

You need to address:

• Who is eligible to work from home and why
  • Everybody? A certain department? People in certain roles?
• How you will provide workers with the technology and applications they need
• How you will create a communication framework for remote workers
• How you will extend your business’ culture and identity to the remote workspace

If you’re looking for more resources to help you quickly pull together an approach to remote work that preserves productivity and keeps employees plugged in, read our blog on how to manage a remote workforce.

Takeaways

The COVID-19 Relief Act will support the American workforce and economy by increasing accessibility to paid leave and sick time while offsetting those costs for employers through tax credits. Those changes will go a long way to help our societal fight against this pandemic, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Remember:

• FMLA has been expanded to specifically provide protections for employees who have COVID-19 or have been exposed
• Paid sick leave can be used to comply with quarantines or care for family member under quarantine
• Those expansions will create increased costs, which can be minimized through:
  • Government tax credits
  • Strong employer-employee communication
  • A strong internal crisis management plan
  • Remote work enablement

How to Learn More

If you’re a business or HR leader searching for guidance to help you navigate the COVID-19 pandemic with an eye towards public health, productivity preservation, and employee benefits compliance, you should join Launchways on Friday, March 20 for What Employers Need to Know About the COVID-19 Outbreak.

This one-hour learning opportunity will deliver insight from Launchways’ team of HR and client success experts. Discussion topics will include:

• Understanding the letter & spirit of new legislative updates and agency guidance
• Actionable human capital management strategies to address social distancing while maintaining productivity
• HR best practices for pandemic policy and employee communications
• How COVID-19 connects to/affects your employee benefit offerings
• Regulations and compliance expectations from OSHA, COBRA, FMLA, etc.

Our team is updating their webinar plan throughout the week to reflect the latest news, statistics, and federal and local guidance. That means this session will be the definitive source for HR and operational recommendations based on the progression of the pandemic. To save your seat at What Employers Need to Know About the COVID-19 Outbreak, register today.

The Essential Guide to Emergency Preparedness Plans for Businesses

by Carolyn Kick | Mar 18, 2020 | COVID-19 Resources

In recent weeks, the global outbreak of COVID-19 has laid bare what many risk and safety experts have known for a long time: businesses are generally far less prepared for most emergency situations than they realize. That’s why we decided to take this moment to discuss what emergency preparedness looks like, what you need to do, and how you can be sure your protocols and policies work well.

Moving forward, we’ll walk through the Who’s, What’s, Where’s, When’s, and How’s of emergency preparedness to explore:

• Who needs to be involved in which aspects of your emergency preparation planning
• How to know what to plan for
• How to identify and address your organization’s unique challenges and strengths
• How to create relevant evacuation and post-emergency protocols
• How to foster an approach to emergency preparedness that’s strong and designed with growth and evolution in mind

Who?

Who Will Be Leaders & Points of Contact in an Emergency?

Your first logistical concern for an emergency preparedness plan is identifying which key team members will coordinate and own your emergency preparedness efforts. Safety and security directors are natural fits, as are top HR personnel who have a deep understanding of chain of command and organizational depth chart.

Once that team comes together, they in turn need to identify team- and department-based leaders who will aid them in spreading the word about emergency preparedness protocols and serve as organizational aids and points of contact during an emergency or drill.

Depending on the size and culture of your organization, it might make sense for those leaders to be departmental managers and supervisors, or it could be beneficial for your emergency team to represent professionals from various tiers and backgrounds within your team. It’s all about creating a leadership and command team that’s scaled to the way your team is organized.

What?

What Might Happen?

The easiest emergency to prepare for is the one you see coming and take seriously. That means your emergency preparedness team needs to use research and brainstorming to identify scenarios that might impact your business and create a plan of action for each one.

It may sound like grim work, but it’s important to think realistically about what bad things might happen. Of course, the specific threats are going to vary based on your region, industry, and other factors, but it’s important to think of things like:

• Fires
  • Fires inside the office or building
  • Nearby wildfires or fires in adjacent structures
• Natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes)
• Active shooters
  • Active shooters on-premises
  • Active shooters reported in the area
  • Addressing credible threats from/concerns about potential shooters
• Building or structural failures
• Hazardous material exposures
• Employee medical emergencies (heart attacks, strokes, seizures, etc.)

Once you’ve created a list of anticipatable emergencies, you can begin to create comprehensive, powerful plans to address each scenario while also building a leadership and organizational framework you can apply during other unforeseen emergencies.

What Are Our Strengths?

As you begin to create your emergency plans and protocols, you need to think about which strengths you can leverage to help you in an emergency. For example:

• Do you have any employees with a first responder, military, or medical background? How can their knowledge and expertise improve your planning or response?
• Is there anything strategic or inherently safe about the location and design of your office or campus? Which places are especially safe in each of the above scenarios?
• Do you have a great team where people treat each other like a family? How can you put that positive community spirit to work during an emergency?
• What resources have you compiled that could be useful in an emergency situation? How can you get access to employee rosters and contact information quickly?
• How do you communicate most effectively? What communication protocols are most effective within your existing culture, and how can you extend that to an emergency situation?

What Are Our Weaknesses or Exposures?

Of course, it’s equally important (if not more) to consider your weaknesses when it comes to emergency preparedness. You need to think about what unique challenges you face because of the way you do business, how your surroundings create exposures or weaknesses, and what you can do to address those concerns.

Your weaknesses or exposures will be specific to your business, but it’s important to think about things like:

• Where are there gaps in the security of your building?
• Do your surroundings make you uniquely susceptible to damage from earthquakes, mudslides, forest fires, tornadoes, etc.?
• Where are hazardous materials stored, and what negative things could potentially happen there?
• What factors (either controllable or not) might hinder first responders in their efforts to provide support to your team in the case of an emergency?
• What problems might you run into during an emergency?
  • Do we have a comprehensive way of knowing who’s supposed to be here?
  • Is our communication framework reliant on electricity, cell service, etc.?

What Do Employees Need to Know?

So, you’ve got a core team of emergency preparedness leaders and an identified network of team- or department-based sub-leaders who understand your emergency protocols, preparedness plans, communication strategy, and overall approach to crisis management. But before you can actually express confidence in your preparedness, you need to figure out what information rank-and-file employees need to know in order for your plans to be effective and how you will communicate that information to them.

Where?

Where Will Employees Go During an in-Office Emergency?

Be sure to think about:

• How different evacuation routes/destinations might be preferable for different emergencies
• Where members of different departments will go if they are at their desks during an emergency
• How employees will connect with others if they’re away from their usual work area during an emergency
• How you’ll know who is where during and after an emergency
• How various conference rooms and communal spaces will be evacuated
• How structural emergencies (fires, inaccessible stairwells) could impact any of these concerns

Where Will Employees Go During an Office Shutdown?

If your office is closed during or after an emergency, it’s important to keep a beat on where your workforce is dispersing to. That means having a strategy to enable remote work and figuring out how you’ll address pay, child care, etc.

When?

When Will We Practice?

No emergency plan – no matter how good it is – will ever succeed in a real use case if it isn’t backed by thoughtful preparation. That means emergency drills.

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is drilling everybody at once, however. The best strategy is to have your emergency preparedness team and team leaders practice their administrative duties several times before and then have those small group leaders practice with their individual teams as well. That way, when the large-scale coordinated drill happens, nobody is experiencing the protocols or walking through their role in the plan for the first time.

It’s also key to think about how you will blend planned and unplanned drills. In all honesty, nobody loves unplanned drills, but they’re highly beneficial for your own plan development and your local first responders, who need to see how you and your employees will address emergencies so they can react accordingly. Finding a balance between lower-pressure walkthroughs and full-speed, all-hands drills is key to building a culture of preparedness.

When Will We Revisit This Plan?

This is one of the questions emergency planners most often forget to ask. Plans are created for the time in which they were designed and the foreseeable future thereafter. No safety or emergency plan, no matter how comprehensive or excellent it is, is designed to last forever.

That’s why it’s crucial to set a date or year upon which your core safety team will reevaluate and revisit your emergency plans and protocols. Of course, it may also become necessary to update your plans before then, as new predictable threats or hazards present themselves.

How?

How Will We Educate Employees About Our Plan?

Those frequent drills will go a long way to get your employees comfortable with your emergency protocols, but there’s far more employee education that needs to happen. Drills must be backed up by full explanations of emergency protocols and directions for follow-up.

Additionally, it’s important to think about how you will make emergency preparedness plans and resources available to employees on a regular basis.

How Will We Assess the Strength of Our Plan?

Once your plan is fully actualized, you need to track your results with improvement in mind. That means paying close attention to your drills, listening to feedback from first responders and safety consultants, and keeping your ear to the ground for emergency preparedness best practices. The best plan is always a growing, evolving one.

Takeaways

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the general lack of emergency preparedness across businesses. We must seize upon this moment to start planning for the next event and ensuring we have effective protocols in place to address foreseeable emergencies and create a framework to handle the unforeseeable.

Remember:

• Safety preparedness must be owned by a core team, but pulling it off requires the engagement of team- or department-level leadership and ground level employees
• It’s crucial to anticipate and plan for as many different specific scenarios as possible
• Drills and practice (both at the individual team and whole-office levels) are essential to handling a true emergency effectively
• Your emergency plans must evolve over time to stay up to date with needs and best practices

The Employer’s Guide to Social Distancing

by Carolyn Kick | Mar 16, 2020 | COVID-19 Resources

With the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, employers around the world are searching for answers as to how they can protect the health of the workforce, maintain some semblance of productivity, and minimize the devastating impact of this novel virus.

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) have both recommended a policy of social distancing for all people during this complex and crucial time. Unfortunately, while news of the guidance has been well-publicized, there is still a dangerous lack of understanding from individuals and employers when it comes to social distancing.

Our goal here is to clarify the meaning, goals, and best practices for social distancing so employers and HR departments can communicate effectively with their workforces about this guidance and make appropriate decisions for the health of their teams and businesses.

Moving forward, we’ll:

• Define social distancing
• Explain why social distancing is so important to public health right now
• Provide guidance for employers looking to maximize their COVID-19 response

What is Social Distancing?

To put it as simply as possible, social distancing means not getting too close to other people. As a practice, social distancing is designed to reduce vectors for disease through individual isolation.

In the office, social distancing means not shaking hands, not gathering together in board or meeting rooms, and not eating or socializing in communal spaces. Staying at least one meter away from other people is a good practice, but maintaining at least two meters is ideal.

Away from work, social distancing means avoiding all nonessential social interactions. Whether it’s attending a play or sporting event, socializing at the bar, or even shopping at the mall, any preventable social interaction or time in a public space (especially involving more than 10 people) should be avoided.

What’s the Difference Between Social Distancing and Self-Quarantine?

As we’ve said, social distancing is a general practice of avoiding close contact with other people. At this time, everybody should be practicing social distancing.

Self-quarantining is the specific practice of staying home during illness or following exposure to an infected person. At this time, noteverybody needs to self-quarantine. You need to self-quarantine and avoid leaving your home completely if you:

• Have a cough and fever and have been diagnosed with or come into close contact with someone who has been diagnosed with COVID-19
  • You need to quarantine for 7 days past your symptoms ending
• Feel fine but were exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19
  • You need to stay home and avoid all public places and unnecessary social interactions for 14 days

Why is Social Distancing Crucial Right Now?

There’s been a lot of confusing messaging over the last few weeks about best- and worst-case scenarios for COVID-19, but Dr. Asaf Bitton of Ariadne Labs in Boston does a great job articulating why social distancing is key to supporting our healthcare system and preventing the worst-case scenario:

Our health system will not be able to cope with the projected numbers of people who will need acute care should we not muster the fortitude and will to socially distance each other starting now. On a regular day, we have about 45,000 staffed ICU beds nationally, which can be ramped up in a crisis to about 95,000. Even moderate projections suggest that if current infectious trends hold, our capacity (locally and nationally) may be overwhelmed as early as mid-late April. Thus, the only strategies that can get us off this concerning trajectory are those that enable us to work together as a community to maintain public health by staying apart.

As Dr. Bitton explains, we must slow the spread of COVID-19 by creating physical space between one other in the coming weeks. If we cannot take these awkward but sensible measures, hospitals and healthcare facilities could easily become overwhelmed, as has already happened in Italy.

It’s worth mentioning that Italy is only 11 days ahead of the United States when it comes to the first diagnosed case. Given the approximately five-day incubation period of the virus, that means our next few days are absolutely critical.

If employers don’t encourage social distancing and take a break from the traditional office culture for the next month, we risk a national emergency that would touch millions of lives around the country.

What Can Employers Do to Support Social Distancing?

In a perfect world, we’d be able to hit the pause button on business until this public health emergency has been sorted out. Unfortunately, economic realities mean that’s not an option.

In order to proceed safely, however, there are a few things employers need to do to protect their workforces and businesses. Let’s take a look at some simple, proactive measures you can take to support social distancing and keep people healthy:

Provide Employee Education on COVID-19

There are an alarming number of misconceptions and misunderstandings of the COVID-19 pandemic out there. One of the most important things you can do is to set your team straight on what’s fact, what’s fiction, and what’s best practice.

A quick email with links to some clear, useful resources (feel free to share this post with them!) will go a long way to set the tone, help your employees feel more secure, and get things moving in a productive, appropriate direction.

Unlimited PTO

Even if you plan on keeping your office open until the event that official quarantine orders are issued, you absolutely need to keep sick employees and employees with sick family members away from the rest of your team. As we’re already seeing around the nation, there is a hesitancy to do this on the part of many workers (in spite of the greater good) because they either don’t want to or feel they cannot sacrifice their limited PTO.

If you expect your employees to stay away from the office and practice appropriate distancing and self-quarantine, you need to unlock your PTO system and provide your team members with the security they need to protect themselves, their families, their coworkers, and your business.

Enable Remote Work

Unlike the Spanish Flu pandemic of a century ago, COVID-19 is occurring in the age of the internet. That means many employers can practice company-wide social distancing while preserving productivity and some sense of normalcy through remote work.

Remote work allows you to close your office and follow best practices for COVID-19 containment while still continuing operations effectively. You can even preserve the casual and collegial feel of your company culture through eConferencing to create opportunities for meaningful professional and social interactions during this time of social distancing.

Takeaways

The COVID-19 pandemic is evolving from day to day but the time for decisive action by employers has unquestionably come. All businesses must make modifications to their daily routines to support social distancing, enable employees to contribute meaningfully from home, and do their part to limit the spread of this deadly virus.

Remember:

• Social distancing is the practice of maintaining distance between people (preferably at least two meters) and avoiding groups and nonessential interactions
• Social distancing and self-quarantining are not the same thing
  • Everyone should practice social distancing
  • Self-quarantining is only necessary for those sick or exposed
• Practicing social distancing in the coming days is crucial to slowing the spread of COVID-19 and protecting our healthcare system so that it can support everybody’s needs

How to Learn More

If you’re an HR or business leader searching for guidance to help you navigate the COVID-19 pandemic with an eye towards public health, productivity preservation, and employee benefits compliance, you should join Launchways on Friday, March 20 for What Employers Need to Know About the COVID-19 Outbreak.

This one-hour webinar will deliver insight from Launchways’ all-star team of HR and client success experts. Discussion topics will include:

• Understanding the new legislative updates and agency guidance
• Actionable human capital management strategies to address social distancing while maintaining productivity
• HR best practices for pandemic policy and employee communications
• How COVID-19 connects to/affects your employee benefits offerings
• Regulations and compliance expectations from OSHA, COBRA, FMLA, etc.

Our team is updating their webinar plan throughout the week to reflect the latest news, statistics, and federal and local guidance. That means this session will be the definitive source for HR and operational recommendations based on the progression of the pandemic. To save your seat at What Employers Need to Know About the COVID-19 Outbreak, sign up today!