The Average Employers Guide to COVID-19

COVID-19 is a new disease. It's hard for employers to know what to do or what they are expected to do as the situation changes daily. State law may affect an employer's obligations. However even in currently unaffected states, employees expect employers to do what they can to keep them safe and be able to answer "what if."

With all types of risk assessment and emergency planning the best first line of defense is elimination of hazard. So today is the day to make a plan because elimination of hazard can't be accomplished in hindsight.

The second most effective way of eliminating risk is substitution, meaning to substitute the source of the hazard by something else. Such as a bank could substitute waiting on customers in person by better utilizing drive-up windows or remote teller stations, thereby providing a way to put social distance and physical barriers between customers and employees.

There are also many other questions to be considered, such as what are an employer's compliance obligations, and how leave, benefit and sick policies apply and if they should be temporarily changed and how.

• How OSHA obligations apply
• Does the ADA apply and in what respects
• How FMLA applies to absences for employees and family members
• Wage and hour considerations
• Applying safety protocols and systems to your workplace to minimize or eliminate exposure to current health hazards
• Using engineering and administrative controls to make safer, jobs that have high people contact
• The basics of a work at home program, even if its temporary
• Using remote work considerations from inside an office to use social distancing to lower risk
• Strengthening relaxing sick leave programs parameters on a temporary basis
• Relaxing sick leave discipline parameters on a temporary basis
• Can you make a sick employee go home and stay home?
• Increasing sick leave program policies and/or benefits on a temporary basis
• Return to work considerations
• What to do with employees who have to travel
• Making good hygiene part of your group norms
• Who pays the bills? How less robust insurance plans put employees and customers at risk. What an employer can do

Today is the day to map out your own particular plan to deal with this emerging issue. No employer wants to fail their employees and no business wants to be known as the first in their state for an outbreak of a new disease.

• Safety
• HR
• Front Line Managers
• Supervisors
• Department or Branch Managers
• Management Positions
• Small Business Owners

       Teri Morning

       MBA, MS, specializes in solving company "people problems"

• Teri is the founder and President of Hindsight Human Resources.www.hindsightcloud.com.
• Teri also sources HR software solutions for incident tracking, employee relations, safety (Incident Tracker), compensation (Compease) and performance management (Performance Pro).
• Twenty+ years human resource and training experience in a variety of fields, including retail, distribution, architectural, engineering, consulting, manufacturing (union), public sector and both profit and non-profit companies.
• Teri has enjoyed consulting with employers on their problems and trained managers and employees for over 20 years, meeting and working with employees from all types of businesses.
• In addition to a MBA, Teri has a Master’s degree in Human Resource Development with a specialization in Conflict Management.
• Teri was certified by the State of Indiana in mediation skills, and Teri is currently certified in Project Management and IT Management and qualified as a Myers-Briggs practitioner. Teri has held the PHR, SPHR, SPHR-CA and SHRM-SCP certifications.