How is your Crisis Response Plan for the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)?

UPDATED 3/7/2020

This link to the CDC provides critical information for employers that will be helpful in developing a Crisis Response Plan that will help protect the business as well as its workforce. While we hope you never have to utilize a crisis response plan, it is imperative to have one, before it is needed. If you wait until it is needed, it is too late, there is not enough time to properly prepare. This is the same guidance I offer my HIPAA consulting clients, with critical advance preparation required for the inevitable data breach.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/guidance-business-response.html

While one must not panic, as there is more unknown than known about the virus, but let us keep in mind the most important responsibility that any employer has to the workforce is keeping each worker safe.

It is important to be prepared for this as with any other disruptive event, such as fire, flood, severe weather, or workplace violence.

I offer the following recommendations for you to consider including in your plan:

Put your Crisis Management Team in place, the membership may vary according to the type of crisis. Make certain you appoint designees; in case the primary appointee is unavailable.

1. Communication Plan. One of the most important things to consider. How will you communicate updates and instructions to your workforce and externally? Who will communicate? Usually best handled by executive leadership, communications department, human resources, legal, or external consultant to bring in an objective perspective, or perhaps a combination of these. Be proactive and put a plan in place before it is needed. If you haven't done one before, now is the perfect opportunity; if you have, it probably needs adjusting to this potential crisis. Start preparing with email templates today, before they are needed. You need to consider internal and external communications, and it is prudent that they are reviewed by legal and/or human resources to evaluate any legal risk or potential ramifications prior to release.

2. Managing ill workers; consider generous PTO plans so that ill workers may remain home, limiting exposure of this or any disease, and protecting remaining workers. Remember your legal obligations of ADA confidentiality and nondisclosure requirements of employee medical information. Employees may discuss their own personal PHI, Protected Health Information, as they see fit. Employers, managers and co-workers may not disclose PHI of its workers without the appropriate and limited, specific release. The type of medical information is also significant with certain types of medical information that must be more closely and vigilantly protected.

This link from the EEOC, recently updated for Covid-19, has important information for dealing with a pandemic and discusses employers ADA responsibilities during a crisis.

https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/pandemic_flu.html

If your business is a covered entity under HIPAA regulations, Health and Human Services have provided guidance regarding emergency disclosures you may review with this link to their site.

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/february-2020-hipaa-and-novel-coronavirus.pdf

3. Managing workers who are not ill, but must stay home due to quarantine or to take care of ill children, or if schools are closed, or taking care of other family members.

4. Review Disability and LOA policies. Are they adequate for this crisis? Most I review would not be. If one must err in these instances, it is best to err on the side of the employee.

5. Compensation issues. Salaried workers are easy, but what about those paid per job or hourly? Can your workforce survive an extended time away from work that this virus may require, that may include extensive recovery and mandatory quarantine times?

6. Consider remote work to reduce spreading contagious disease. You might consider a short term agreement for this. You will want to include language explaining this is a short term arrangement and that it may be revoked at any time at the employer's discretion. Another potential issue is the use of technology and equipment.

7. Technology. The agreement should spell out if business or personal property and systems will be used, and who will pay for equipment and systems. You may want to specify time limits on the arrangements.

8. Injuries. Remember injuries suffered while working from home may still be covered by WC, so strict reporting protocols should remain in place, whether working on or offsite.

9. Consider travel plans, some workers may be leery of traveling during this scare, is the travel really necessary and might be postponed? These are discussions your team should have. Employers who require travel to areas with heightened travel warnings may be putting themselves, their company, and their workers in jeopardy. Look to the CDC and World Health Organization (WHO) for the latest information on this virus and travel warnings.

As with any crisis response plan, it should involve a team of your leaders. You should consider issues such as your information security issues and how remote work would impact your business.

You might want to review whether your business has insurance which might offset any losses you suffer. The risk to employers and operations is huge during this crisis. Employers may face negligence claims from clients, customers, and staff that they were exposed to infection, if employers fail to develop and properly implement a comprehensive Crisis Response Plan. This would be a good time to review and update your insurance policies due the potentially catastrophic impact a pandemic on this scale could have on your business and your workforce.

There could be a number of issues involved in either a shutdown of your business, even for a brief period, or the loss of a portion of the workforce due to COVID-19 causing them to be out of work for several weeks. The best way to prepare is by frank conversations with your business leaders to weigh in on the impact and how best to deal with it.

Consider an attitude shift. Our culture emphasizes getting the job done, at nearly any cost, working through illness and pain, and this usually results in spreading the disease.

Perhaps this is the disease that will create a meaningful cultural change, by creating a new awareness and shift in our priorities.

Perhaps it will compel us to look at national sick leave legislation with new clarity and resolve.

Employers do not need to wait for national legislation, you can create change now, with new, friendlier employee leave policies.

I've only touched the surface here. There is far more to consider than this post will allow.

Contact us if you need additional information, resources, or help creating your Response Plan or developing or adjusting policies.