What you need to know about coronavirus in the workplace as you make decisions for your business

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The sudden outbreak of the coronavirus in the United States has left businesses scrambling to put policies into place to protect workers and consumers, instituting new practices on everything from working from home to business travel. 

Few companies had contingency plans for this type of crisis and the day-to-day changes in the news and threat level have meant owners and business leaders have had to react in real time, making decisions that have implications not just on their own bottom lines but on the financial health of their employees and constituents.

Because this is an unprecedented outbreak, there is no clear roadmap for how businesses should respond but organizations, individuals and larger corporations are putting together resources and playbooks for smaller firms to follow.

With that in mind, this newsletter edition is going to be a little different. Below you’ll find business tips and the latest information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from a briefing held on March 10 that was conducted with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), responses from business leaders and how they are leading their companies and insights from other small business owners on how they are coping with the outbreak.

For the latest health updates from the World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control, click here. The New York Times has a detailed and constantly updated map of confirmed cases across the U.S.

CDC and SHRM recommendations

• Employers are playing a key role in preventing the spread of the virus, said Jay Butler, the CDC’s deputy director for infectious diseases.
• You’ve read this everywhere but it’s worth repeating: Wash your hands. Butler emphasized proper hand hygiene both at home and in the workplace. If your business is still open, be sure to clean your work surfaces with household disinfectants and encourage employees to sneeze into disposable Kleenex or their elbows. 
• Actively encourage sick employees to stay at home. This could require you to reevaluate your sick leave policies to ensure people are not incentivized to push through to continue getting paid. “Even if someone is mildly ill, it’s not a good time to tough it out because that can lead to the spread of the virus and complications for those who are at risk like older employees,” Butler said.
• SHRM is recommending employers offer paid sick leave. “The trend we’re seeing is many are paying employees because they can’t afford for their operations to sustain a bigger exposure to the epidemic. Employers could have sick employees use paid leave and even allow them to go into the negative leave bank if needed,” said SHRM Chief Knowledge Officer Alexander Alonso. 
• Minimize contact between your employees and with your customers. The best way to do this is by instituting flexible telework options, if your business is able to accommodate those. Otherwise, consider allowing employees to change their schedules so they are not entering and leaving at peak times.
• If a worker comes to the office sick, separate them from the rest of your employees as quickly as possible and send them home.
• Reconsider business travel plans. Most major conferences and events like SXSW and annual tech conferences have already been canceled, postponed or moved online. Trade shows are following a similar pattern. If you have not heard from event organizers, double check that it is still happening before sending employees.
• Be as flexible as possible with your employees. Schools are beginning to shut down, causing many parents to stay home with their kids. As the outbreak continues to disrupt normal life, employees and employers alike will need to adapt and have patience.
• If one of your employees is diagnosed with coronavirus, you are obligated to inform your employees, customers and vendors who may have been exposed.
• The CDC is not recommending you require employees to have a doctor’s note to return back to work after having a fever or respiratory illness (coronavirus or otherwise). Medical professionals are extremely busy caring for patients and managing the outbreak and will likely not have the time to issue these types of notices.
• For a more detailed list of recommendations, see the CDC’s guide for businesses and other organizations.

Corporate responses

• Twitter, Amazon, Square, L'Oreal, Ford and JP Morgan are all restricting global and non-essential travel.
• Walmart has issued three possible scenarios for emergency leave for its retail employees. 1. Workers can use their allocated time off if they do not feel well or are "uncomfortable" coming in and the company's attendance policy will not be enforced until April. 2. Workers at any store or distribution center that is placed under quarantine will receive up to two weeks of pay. 3. If a worker is diagnosed with the virus, they will receive up to two weeks of pay.
• Microsoft, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon have all asked their employees to work from home through the end of March. (Editor’s note: Microsoft is LinkedIn’s parent company.)
• Click here for a full list of company responses, major university closures and conference cancellations that is continuously being updated.

Impact on small businesses

• SXSW, Austin’s annual two-week tech, music and film festival, was canceled last week after the government declared a local disaster. While expected, the cancellation is a blow to local businesses that depend on festival goers for a sizable portion of their revenue. “SXSW is huge for us. It helps us save enough money for our slow season which is June and July. The revenue loss will be devastating,” Jedediah Grant, president of Elektrica, wrote in a comment on LinkedIn. More than a hundred business owners have sounded off on LinkedIn on what this means for the Austin economy and their firms.
• Those who can allow their employees to work from home are sharing best tips for how to manage a remote workforce, what technology tools to put into place and how they’re deciding when to close the office. Join the conversation and see their insights here.
• While the number of COVID-19 cases is now higher outside of China, supply chains coming out of China are still being disrupted with closures and delays. Large firms will be the priority once the factories are running at full capacity again, leaving small businesses in a lurch. See how owners are dealing with inventory and supply chain issues.

Bonus: My colleague Devin Banerjee is hosting this conversation from investors and financial advisors for how the average person should be looking at the ups and downs in the stock market and their own financial health.

How is your business handling the coronavirus outbreak? What policies have you instituted and what questions do you have around best practices?