COVID 19 Q&A PT 1: Should we send everyone to work from home with this Coronavirus?

What this episode covers

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the People Processes podcast. Where we dive deep into the tools, laws and yes processes that you need to know in order to scale and grow your organization. I'm going to cut the intro short and introduce myself briefly. My name is Rhamy Alejeal. I'm the CEO of people processes. And this is going to be part one of six of our COVID-19 QA. We've received many, many questions coming in about the coronavirus. And we've broken this into six short key episodes, where we're just going to talk about some of the key pieces that are relevant to your organization as we try to deal with this pandemic. There are a lot of moving pieces going on. So I guess I should say that this was recorded on March 14 2020. They will be coming out over the next two weeks at the latest, hopefully faster as they go through production and we will be getting them out each day or every other day or so until they are through. We're going to first talk about a question we're getting the most of which is remote work and how to send everyone home. Part I. Should we send everyone home because of the coronavirus? Part II. We're going to talk about what happens if we think an employee may be sick. “What should you do?” Part III. “Can employees refuse to come to work because of their fear of coronavirus?” And the sub-questions about that: “What if they don't want to wear a mask?” “What if they are saying they won't work without a mask?” Part IV. We're going to talk about group health insurance and how it is reacting to coronavirus. What things are covered automatically, what aren't how those work and additional ways you can take advantage of those and communications you should send to your employees. Part V. “What about paying these employees that either you sent home sick, they call in sick?” Maybe they're saying they're sick but they're not. You're just you know, they're just saying they are. “How do we deal with the wage and hour implications of this.” And finally, we're going to talk about workers compensation and answer the question of the employer liability. Part VI. If an employee gets sick with coronavirus and where that falls and that's going to be Part six. Let's dive into part one. Real quick reminder, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, reach out to me on LinkedIn, Rhamy Alejeal. People Processes on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send us your questions. If you need help, sample communications, message me. All of our clients have already received communications to us with employees checklists on telecommuting, all sorts of things. I definitely want to assist in any way we can during this time. So if we can be of help, please let me know. Alright, let's first talk about this question. Should we put in a temporary remote work policy in light of coronavirus? I mean, Should we send everybody home? Whether you do this or not is entirely dependent on your organization's circumstances and the area of the country where your workers reside. You may not want to introduce a new system like this. If you've not yet had the time to test and develop remote work capabilities, it could very likely cause you more problems than it solves. On the other hand, if you've got established protocols in place, this is a great opportunity to leverage them. In our company, we've been allowing telecommuting for years, everyone is outfitted with laptops, biometric security devices, separate security key fobs, all these things that allow us to confidently allow our employees to do their job from home. Our employees are disciplined and working from home, they understand the ins and outs of it. They know about problems with childcare, all sorts of things. But if you've never done it before, it's quite different. The key is to make sure your decision is educated and intentional, not reactionary and spur of the moment. If sending people home, you feel competent,...