COVID-19: News and Updates |
| Special #21 - April 17, 2020 |
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Articles and Updates Today
- US Chamber News: How Coronavirus-Impacted Businesses Can Get an Employee Retention Tax Credit
- Harvard Business Review Article - Leaders, Do You Have a Clear Vision for the Post-Crisis Future? by Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz April 17, 2020
-LEGAL BULLETIN - COVID-19 and "regular" discrimination Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete,LLP
April 17, 2020
- ¶46,868 HHS cites COVID-19 as good cause for circumventing APA rules, approves new respiratory protection — AGENCY REGULATION,
Apr. 17, 2020
- HRDive Article - OSHA urges workers to 'immediately' report retaliation for reporting unsafe working conditions AUTHOR Lisa Burden / PUBLISHED April 16, 2020
- HRDive Article - Gartner: Managers should expect remote teams after COVID pandemic AUTHOR Sheryl Estrada / PUBLISHED April 17, 2020
- Georgia Department of Public Health COVID-19 Daily Status Report
* Note: If you have any employment law/HR topics or issues you would like to see us cover in the News and Updates please email us at chris@georgiaemployers.org.
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Financial Assistance for Small Business
Save Small Business Fund
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, with founding partner Vistaprint, launched the Save Small Business Fund, a grant program to provide assistance to small businesses owners impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Funded by contributions from corporate and philanthropic partners, the Foundation will distribute $5,000 grants to small employers in economically vulnerable communities in the United States and its territories.
The Save Small Business Fund is part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Save Small Business Initiative — a nationwide program to address small businesses’ immediate needs, mitigate closures and job losses, and mobilize support for long-term recovery. The Foundation is launching the fund with support from founding partner, Vistaprint, and additional donations from supporting partners, Merck, S&P Global Foundation, and Travelers.
Grant applications open on April 20, 2020.
Employee Assistance Funds
The U.S. Chamber Foundation partnered with America’s Charities to offer an Employee Assistance Fund (EAF) program to provide management services for employers looking to support their employees during times of hardship.
An EAF program, also known as an Employee Relief Fund or an Employee Crisis Fund, is a program to help employees cope with unexpected events that place undue financial stress on them and their families, such as the coronavirus, helping them recover more quickly. This demonstrates a company's care for employees and commitment to their well-being, and provides co-workers an opportunity to help their colleagues.
Learn more about how your business can get involved.
Email: RMousseau@uschamber.com
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| | | US Chamber News
How Coronavirus-Impacted Businesses Can Get an Employee Retention Tax Credit
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the government’s $2 trillion stimulus bill, includes a new tax credit for businesses impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.
By: Sean Ludwig, Contributor
The Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC), another portion of the CARES Act, is designed to incentivize businesses to keep employees on their payroll during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With many American businesses around the country struggling due to the effects of coronavirus, the government responded by passing the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. While much of the CARES Act was focused on providing forgivable small business loans via the Paycheck Protection Program, another part of the Act included a new Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) that could help some businesses as well.
The ERTC has been designed to incentivize businesses of all sizes to keep employees on their payroll during this period of uncertainty, especially those companies that have been forced to close or are partially close. Businesses that lost significant revenue may also be eligible for this tax credit.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has created a useful guide to the new Employee Retention Tax Credit to walk employers through how the ERTC works. Below, businesses can also find some important questions and answers to help get a better understanding of these new credits and which companies can receive them.
Is my company eligible?
Businesses of all sizes, including non-profits, can receive the ERTC in two circumstances:
- If your business operations were fully or partially suspended as a result of government-mandated COVID-19 shut-down order, or
- If your business experiences a decline in gross receipts by more than 50% in a quarter compared to the same quarter in 2019.
For the second qualifier, eligibility ends if gross receipts in a quarter exceed 80% compared to the same quarter in 2019. For example, this means if your business has a 2020 second quarter where revenue is down 51%, but then your 2020 third quarter has revenue up by 81%, then you only qualify during the second quarter.
In regards to tax-exempt organizations that fall under 501(c) categorization, they must have partially or fully suspended all operations to qualify.
Importantly, any employer who receives a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan will not be eligible for the ERTC.
Marilyn Landis, president and CEO of Basic Business Concepts, discuss small business coronavirus tax changes. — National Small Business Town Hall by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Inc. Importantly, any employer who receives a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan will not be eligible for the ERTC.
Coronavirus Guide for Small Businesses
CO— is working to bring you the best resources and information to help you navigate this challenging time. Read on for our complete coronavirus coverage.
How much is the tax credit worth?
The amount of the tax credit is 50% of qualifying wages, with payment up to $10,000 in total. Wages are not limited to cash payments, but can also include a portion of the cost of employer-provided health care. However, compensation does not include paid sick or family leave for which the employer is reimbursed under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. This credit can be obtained on wages paid or incurred from March 13, 2020, through January 1, 2021.
Which employees count toward this?
The size of your company determines which employees count toward the ERTC, according to the IRS:
- If your company has 100 or fewer full-time employees on average in 2019, then all employees — regardless if they worked or not — count toward eligibility.
- If your company has more than 100 employees on average in 2019, full-time employees who received wages but did not work during the calendar quarter count toward eligibility.
Importantly, employers may not claim the same employee for this credit and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit for the same period.
How do I receive this credit?
This refundable tax credit can be applied against the employer’s portion of payroll taxes, which are reported quarterly. Basically, your company can be reimbursed for the credit by taking out deposits of payroll taxes that would have normally been withheld from employee wages.
Eligible employers can report wages and related health insurance costs for each quarter on their quarterly employment tax returns via a Form 941 beginning with the second quarter of 2020. Additionally, if a company’s employment tax deposits do not cover the credit cost, that employer can receive a payment in advance from the IRS by submitting a Form 7200.
The Internal Revenue Service may issue further guidance regarding the ERTC process, so please contact the IRS if you have questions.
For more resources from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:
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| | | Harvard Business Review Article You Have a Clear Vision for the Post-Crisis Future?by Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz April 17, 2020
We’ve made our coronavirus coverage free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.
As the Covid-19 pandemic shakes the global economy and disrupts the way we live, work, and conduct business, leaders are scrambling to manage the immediate fallout. But, as history proves, it’s also necessary to prepare for what’s next. Visionary leaders like Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Winston Churchill, and Nelson Mandela didn’t simply react to the most imminent threats confronting them; they also looked beyond the dark horizon. They were guided — and guided their people in turn — by their vision for a better future, after those challenges had been overcome.
Vision is especially urgent during a crisis as global and systematic as this one. Inflections that you might have had five years to anticipate in a normal environment might unfold in a matter of weeks or months. Trend lines, such as those towards telecommuting, telemedicine, online shopping, and digital media consumption, are suddenly much steeper. Global supply chains are broken. Healthcare delivery is likely to change in ways that will make the last decade’s adoption of Obamacare look trivial. Many of your B2B customers may be shut down; millions of consumers are out of work. Some of the fundamental assumptions underlying your current business model may have been (or may soon be) upended.
In short, the business environment that you land in when the pandemic comes to an end — which could be one to two years from now — may be very different from what it was before the crisis began.
You need to begin preparing for it now. And to do that right, you need to have a longer-term vision of what you aspire to become in five or even 10 years — a north star that will focus and help shape your thinking about the short and the mid-term. It may be hard to see now, but the seeds of the next great growth industries are taking root now. Think back to Apple 20 years ago, which famously envisioned and started to plan for the iPod and iPhone as its computer business came under enormous strain during the dotcom crash.
Of course, nobody has a crystal ball (even Steve Jobs didn’t); if such a thing existed, we wouldn’t be in this fix. But while you can’t predict what’s coming with perfect certainty, you can develop much more clarity than you might imagine about what you could and should become, create a plan to live into it, and then set it into motion. Here’s our process, as detailed in our new book Lead from the Future, for doing exactly that.
Spend time envisioning your future. Ideally, you should dedicate about 10 to 20 percent of your time on a weekly basis over the next few months to exploring and envisioning where you want your organization to be when the crisis passes. This aspiration, of course, should be consistent with your longer-term vision.
Given the urgent demands of the present, some leaders may be tempted to delegate the responsibility for this kind of thinking to others, but it is critical that the CEO, CFO, CSO, and other key line leaders — the people who sign off on major resource allocation decisions — do this work themselves.
Interrogate what is likely to change about your customers, markets, and operating environment, and what isn’t. Focus on what your customers will require, how you’ll meet their new and evolving demands, the resonance of your products and services, and your overall capabilities.
Ask how resilient your core businesses will be in the light of these changes. Consider both threats and opportunities, and pinpoint elements of your portfolio that may no longer make sense and that will need to be sold off or shut down, as well as opportunities to accelerate new growth offerings.
Develop a strategy to walk back your envisioned future to today. Working backwards, lay out a path from your long-term aspiration to the mid-term (your post-crisis focal point), and from there to today. Reverse-engineer a series of benchmarks and milestones at regular intervals along the way. The reason to start in the future and “walk” backwards is that (1) it allows you to “clean-sheet” what you could become without being overly constrained by the way things are today; (2) it forces you to think concretely and in terms of dollars and cents, which (3) helps you decide which investments should be given priority.
To give you an example of how this works, suppose you are the president of a university. You know that online learning will be a major part of your future and anchored in new models that seamlessly blend online and in-person offerings. That future – already burgeoning before the crisis, and now being rushed into prime time – has accelerated. Step back from the mad dash to move this year’s courses online (an admirable feat, no doubt) and imagine what you’ll roll out at the start of the new academic year in the fall of 2021.
Then ask yourself what would have to be true, and by when, for it to happen in the best possible way. Systems will have to be in place, curriculum locked down, integration with conventional offerings worked out, people trained and hired. Perhaps you can meet all your benchmarks if you create the program internally, or maybe you need to partner with a developer or buy something off the shelf. The fall 2020 semester, starting a few months from now, will be a prime opportunity to pilot key elements of your envisioned program.
Be prepared to learn and pivot. Given the rapidly changing environment that you are working in, make sure to measure, monitor, and formally review your progress. Initially, you will be working off assumptions. As you test them in the real world, you will have more data and experience to prove or disprove them. Based on what you learn, adjust both your vision and your strategy.
As you work toward your mid-term and long-term goals, you must be attentive to both the strong and faint signals you receive. That requires a certain degree of humility, as you will likely have to surrender some of your certainties after they are tested against reality and fail. Speed and agility are key; you must learn quickly, constantly pivoting and adjusting. In doing so, you’ll also revisit your vision and continue to shape it.
Rally your team around your vision. Your people and stakeholders will have to make sacrifices, so you want them to believe in your view of the better future that they can achieve. Ideally, you already have a long-term vision of what you want to be which is inspiring, imbued with purpose, and relatively stable, compared to the roller coaster you are on today. While a business can succeed without having an explicit mission, there is a close association between missions and margins.
In 2019, our firm Innosight identified the 20 global companies that had achieved the highest-impact transformations of the decade. A newly strengthened sense of purpose, we found, was their common denominator. Siemens, for example, had recently embraced an explicit mission to serve society. China’s Tencent had announced a quest to create “tech for social good”; while Denmark’s Ørsted transformed itself from a struggling natural gas business to a cutting-edge wind energy company, increasing its net profits by some $3 billion per year. Ørsted’s long-term vision of itself as a green company not only inspires its people to perform, it helps its leaders keep its strategy on target.
It is impossible to overestimate gravity of the present crisis. Many of you are wrestling with existential challenges; virtually all of you will have to adopt what amounts to a wartime footing. You may feel that you simply can’t afford to carve out the time that it takes to set a vision and build a strategic path to it. But the leaders who manage the day-to-day and lead with vision will emerge from the crisis with companies that are stronger and more resilient than they were before.
If our free content helps you to contend with these challenges, please consider subscribing to HBR. A subscription purchase is the best way to support the creation of these resources.
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LEGAL BULLETIN Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete,LLP Posted April 17, 2020
COVID-19 and "regular" discrimination
BY ROBIN SHEA ON 4.17.20
POSTED IN AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT, CORONAVIRUS, DISCRIMINATION, HARASSMENT, PREGNANCY, REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION National origin, race, age, pregnancy -- and coronavirus.
Dear Readers:
No, I have not quit blogging!
As you can imagine, we at Constangy have been consumed with getting up to speed on new laws like the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, debating among ourselves what they mean, answering employers' questions about the novel (get it?) legal issues, as well as editing and publishing a record number of bulletins and blog posts. (By my count, we've had 51 since St. Patrick's Day.)
As a result, I haven't had a moment to blog.
But this week, things seem to be returning to a saner pace. And, since my colleagues have very ably covered just about every COVID-19-related topic under the sun, I want to riff on an issue that was touched on by Sarah Phaff of our Atlanta Office this week: How does the COVID-19 crisis mesh with "regular" discrimination laws -- like Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act?
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued updated guidance last week on issues related to COVID-19. Most of the updates related to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is no surprise since coronavirus is a medical condition. But there were some interesting issues related to these other laws. Sarah's bulletin has the full text of the EEOC guidance, and you will want to read it if you haven't already. Here is my "executive summary" in handy Q and A form, with a little commentary. And some sick gifs. (Get it?)
Since the latest news reports indicate that COVID-19 may indeed have originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, we're trying to be careful. Can we refuse to hire Chinese people, or Americans of Chinese descent, or east Asians?
Dude, no!
No.
No.
No.
Well, then, if we do hire them, can we make them go through more rigorous medical screening than we'd require of candidates from other parts of the world?
No. That would be a double whammy: National origin discrimination, and an ADA violation. You can conduct post-offer, pre-employment medical screening -- including coronavirus testing -- but you have to treat all offerees in the same job category the same. If you require Chinese candidates to undergo rigorous medical screening after a conditional offer of employment has been made, you must require it of all of your non-Chinese offerees in the same job category.
The EEOC has loosened up some of the strict ADA rules that usually apply to pre-offer medical screening, as well as screening of current employees. For example, in normal times an employer would not be allowed to take the temperature of a job applicant or an asymptomatic employee, but while we're in this national emergency, you can do those things. But you would still have to treat all similarly situated people the same way and not make distinctions based on national origin or any other legally protected category.
Does that also mean we can't tease our Chinese employees about infecting us with COVID-19?
What do you think? Gosh!
If you learn -- or even have reason to believe -- that this is going on, you should treat it as you would any other workplace harassment issue. Take it seriously, investigate promptly and thoroughly, and (if confirmed) take appropriate disciplinary action against the harasser(s).
These rules apply whether the victim is a Chinese national, an American of Chinese descent, or Asian (or an American of Asian descent). They also apply if the victim is an American of non-Asian descent who is married to or otherwise associates with Asians or Asian-Americans.
Can we refuse to hire applicants from Detroit, then? I hear the coronavirus cases there are going through the roof.
It might not be illegal to discriminate against people from Detroit per se, but you would need to watch out for disparate impact -- when a neutral employment policy has a disparate impact on individuals of a particular protected group. It's very possible that screening out people from Detroit could have a disparate impact based on race, and then you'd be in trouble.
Plus, I grew up in the Detroit area, and I think we make fine employees.
(Did she really say that?)
All right. Got it. No discrimination based on national origin or race. Here's another question. I've read that older people are especially vulnerable to COVID-19. We have an employee who is 68 years old and healthy. But for his own safety because he's over 65, we'd like to send him home until this pandemic blows over. We figured we'd let him use his PTO, so he won't lose any compensation. Can we do that?
Nope, that would be age discrimination. But the EEOC does say that you can offer him the option of telecommuting (assuming the job would allow for that). If that's a possibility, it would be up to him whether to take you up on that offer. And you probably knew this already, but if he's doing his job remotely, he's working, so you would have to pay him his regular wages. You wouldn't be allowed to require him to use PTO.
P.S. If you require him to use his PTO for an illegal leave, then he would be losing compensation. He would be losing his PTO!
This guy can't do his job remotely. He has to work on site. Would we be required to make reasonable accommodations for him in the workplace?
Assuming he has no known medical conditions, no. You don't have any legal obligation to make reasonable accommodations for an employee's age. But you could certainly consider making some accommodations for him voluntarily. Just don't go overboard -- if you accommodate too much, you may deprive him of opportunities that younger workers would get.
I think you may have answered my next question. We have another employee who just announced that she is pregnant. Of course, she may be vulnerable to COVID-19, and we also wouldn't want to cause any harm to her unborn child. So, do I hear you saying that we'd be under no legal obligation to accommodate her?
Of course not! That would be way too simple. Since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Young v. UPS, employers are required to make reasonable accommodations for pregnancy and related conditions if they accommodate non-pregnant employees who are similar in their ability or inability to work.
In this case, an appropriate comparator would be an employee who had another medical condition that put him or her at heightened risk in the event of an exposure to COVID-19 -- for example, an employee with diabetes or an immune disorder. If you would accommodate that employee, then you would be expected to accommodate the pregnant employee, as well.
Well, thanks for nothing, Robin! You have ruined my weekend.
I missed you, too! ***
Robin E. Shea Partner WINSTON-SALEM Email: rshea@constangy.com | 336.721.6854
Robin has 30 years' experience in employment litigation, including Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the Equal Pay Act ...
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| | | | ¶46,868 HHS cites COVID-19 as good cause for circumventing APA rules, approves new respiratory protection — AGENCY REGULATION, Apr. 17, 2020
In light of perils facing healthcare workers and emergency responders fighting novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), HHS issued an interim final rule on April 14 to update regulatory requirements used by the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Effective immediately, HHS’s final interim rule provides for approval of and standards for a new class of PAPR, known as the PAPR100, which may be better suited for healthcare workers and other first responders compared to other PSPRs.
In light of the current pandemic, HHS found good cause pursuant to statute to waive the use of prior notice and comment procedures for the interim final rule and to make the rule effective immediately.
In addition to creating a new class of PAPR100s, the interim final rule also directs consolidation of standards for all types of air-purifying particulate respirators and elimination of standards related to certain obsolete respirators. However, HHS stated that the interim rule would not substantively impact certification testing and approval of existing PAPR class HE respirator or for non-powered air-purifying particulate respirators, including the N95 mask, which has been in high demand for healthcare workers and other first responders. HHS indicated that NIOSH expects that the introduction of PAPR100s into the marketplace will help alleviated that high demand.
Different respirators. HHS broke down different types of respirators and explained that PAPRs are a subclass of air-purifying respirators and are approved by NIOSH. HHS discussed the difference between PAPRs and non-powered air-purifying particulate respirators. The scope of the interim final rule applies to all air-purifying particulate respirators, as well as gas and vapor respirators that incorporate a particulate filter. Specifically, NIOSH consolidates all air-purifying particulate respirator requirements, regardless of whether powered or unpowered. Through the interim final rule, NIOSH also eliminates "unneeded or archaic" portions of the standard.
There are two types of PAPR100s. The first is the N series and the second is the P series. The first is not for use against oil-based aerosols; the second is strongly resistant to them. The silica dust test used in the HE equipment is replaced with something else in each the N and P series. This creates a new standard for the PAPR100.
Although NIOSH will not designate either the PAPR100 or PAPR HE as specifically for industrial or non-industrial use, HHS expects that HEs will continue to be the choice for industrial use. HHS emphasized that the protections expected by PAPR100 are equivalent to those provided by PAPR HE, and that therefore respiratory safety is assured notwithstanding the setting. However, the PAPR100 is intended to benefit healthcare workers and first responders. HHS explained that current PAPRs, excluding the PAPR100s, are unwieldy, limiting them from widespread adoption in the healthcare industry. For example, the PAPR class HE requirements were defined decades ago, and were considered for use in more industrial settings. HHS explained that since then, PAPRs have evolved beyond industrial use, including in healthcare.
Substitution. The interim rule compares PAPR100s to N95 filtering facepiece respirators, pointing out the advantage of the former. As a result of COVID-19, there has been a surge in hospitalizations, and as a result, a shortage of personal protective equipment, including respiratory protection for healthcare workers and first responders. In less than a three week period recently, several potential approval holders solicited NIOSH to explore the possibility of producing PAPRs to augment the need building in the healthcare industry arising from COVID-19. According to HHS, NIOSH expects that, with respect to the healthcare industry, the PAPR100s will replace class HE devices, and substitute for the use of N95 masks.
In explaining its decision to forego procedural requirements under the Administrative Procedures Act, HHS said it had good cause to waive the use of prior notice and a comment period, as it was impractical in light of the current public health emergency. Citing the COVID-19 pandemic, HHS said that its decision was "in the interest of protecting the health of healthcare workers and emergency responders who are on the front lines of the current public health emergency as soon as possible."
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| | | HRDive Article OSHA urges workers to 'immediately' report retaliation for reporting unsafe working conditions
AUTHOR Lisa Burden
PUBLISHED April 16, 2020
Dive Brief:
• It's illegal to retaliate against workers who report unsafe and unhealthy working conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reminded employers April 8, while also urging employees who believe they've suffered such retaliation to report it to the agency immediately. Retaliation can include terminations, demotions, refusal to grant overtime or promotions or reductions in pay or hours, the agency said.
• Employers are required to provide healthy and safe workplaces for employees under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, according to OSHA. The law also forbids retaliation against those who report violations and the agency, in its announcement, encouraged "[a]ny worker who believes that their employer is retaliating against them for reporting unsafe working conditions [to] contact OSHA immediately."
• OSHA added that it enforces the whistleblower provisions of more than 20 laws that cover various industries including airlines, commercial motor carriers, food safety, motor vehicle safety and public transportation.
Dive Insight:
• Personal protective equipment standards, which require using gloves, eye and face protection, and respiratory protection when job hazards warrant it.
• Respiratory protection standards that make clear that when respirators are necessary, employers must put into place a comprehensive protection program.
• The general duty clause that requires employers furnish to each worker a place of employment free of recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.
• Bloodborne pathogens standards that apply to workplace exposure to human blood and other potentially infectious materials.
State standards also can apply, OSHA said, observing that state laws may have even more stringent requirements. And according to OSHA regulations — and as it pointed out in its most recent reminder — "an employer may not retaliate against an employee when the employer knows or suspects that the employee has engaged in activity protected by the statute."
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| | | HRDive Article
Gartner: Managers should expect remote teams after COVID pandemic
AUTHOR Sheryl Estrada
PUBLISHED April 17, 2020
Dive Brief:
• Telework is becoming a workplace standard for many companies due to the COVID-19 pandemic and may become more commonplace after the pandemic passes, according to a Gartner Inc. report published April 14. Almost 50% of organizations represented in the survey of HR leaders said 81% or more of their employees are working from home.
• Gartner found that 30% of employees worked remotely at least part of the time before the pandemic, and 41% said they are likely to work remotely, at least some of the time, in the future. "Ultimately, the COVID-19 pandemic has many employees planning to work in a way that they hadn’t previously considered," Brian Kropp, chief of research for the Gartner HR practice, said in a statement.
• To help organizations manage remote talent during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gartner developed the NEAR model, which includes four steps: normalize self-direction; enable new relationships; accentuate the positive; and revamp team expectations. Remote workers are highly productive, yet harder for companies to retain, according to a survey of more than 5,000 employees from the first quarter of 2020, Gartner said.
Dive Insight:
To overcome challenges amid the shift to a remote work environment, companies must communicate expectations to employees, experts said.
Managers play a vital role in leading communication efforts and should lean heavily on technology, according to Dux Raymond Sy, chief marketing officer at AvePoint, a software company. Digital tools including SharePoint, Microsoft Teams and Yammer are useful, Sy said in a recent interview with CIO Dive, HR Dive's sister publication. Managers should also set work goals as a team, focus on production and accommodate the unexpected as employees adjust to remote work, he said.
Successful managers should also establish structured daily check-ins with remote employees, according to the Harvard Business Review (HBR). It could be a team call if the work is collaborative or one-on-one calls, if staff works mainly independent of each other, HBR said.
During times of crisis, a team leader in a remote environment needs "a high level of social intelligence and strong collaboration skills,"Anita Williams Woolley, associate professor of organizational behavior and theory at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, told HR Dive in a recent interview. Social intelligence is linked to emotional intelligence, which was listed in a Jan. 9 LinkedIn Learning report on the skills companies need the most in 2020. "Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, evaluate, and respond to your own emotions and the emotions of others," the report stated.
Responding to emotions of workers and showing care can increase employee retention. "The Science of Care," a Limeade Institute white paper published in October, defined "care" as providing what's necessary for an employee’s "health, welfare, maintenance and protection." Limeade said that 60% of workers surveyed who felt cared for said they plan to stay three or more years with their companies, in comparison to only 7% of those who said they don't feel cared for.
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| | | Georgia Department of Public Health COVID-19 Daily Status Report
Georgia Department of Public Health COVID-19 Daily Status Report For: 04/17/2020
These data represent confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported to the Georgia Department of Public Health as of 04/17/2020 12:22:57.
A confirmed case is defined as a person who has tested positive for 2019 novel coronavirus.
COVID-19 Confirmed Cases: No. Cases (%)
Total 17194 (100%)
Hospitalized 3324 (19.33%)
Deaths 650 (3.78%)
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Georgia Employers' Association |
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