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like that it looks like we're just past 10 o'clock so you might might as well go ahead and get things started I'll say a big welcome to our first virtual rec meeting this this one today is going to be all around back to work the wind weather we're how to reopen I'm Jessica Payne I'm this year's wreck chairwoman Breck is the Birmingham regional Enterprise Council for those of you who may be new to it I'm excited to have you join us today I'm a commercial banker at JP Morgan Chase normally here in Birmingham but today coming to you from my living room in trustful so I know a lot of you are just like me sitting in your living rooms or in your home offices and trying to figure out if you are the one responsible for making decisions about coming back to work if it's time or bringing back that information to your company I don't know we were discussing some of the the background interruptions that happened and a yesterday I had a meeting that my two tiny co-workers were in the background and princess dresses and ninja metal hobby horses so it reaffirmed to me that I am ready to come back to work as I know several you might be as well but that'll also just keep everybody on your toes it's like we said we you never know what might pop up in the background so keep things interesting but so just thank you for joining us today we are going to hear from Fred McCallum at the BBA and Janelle honored who's a share folder with littler we'll be talking a little bit about some of the different feedback that fred has gotten from BBA investors a little bit of around the new mask ordnance some of the changes to that some information long on that front and then some of the resources that the BBA has that can help along those lines as well and then Janelle is going to talk more she's got some great content around sort of logistics some of the legal issues to be thinking about as you're contemplating coming back to work so just as you I basically has a little housekeeping after the presentation if you want to go to the BBA we have a coven 19 resource page that Fred will tell you a little bit more about there's a webinars link there and that will give you all the slides from today's presentation and then other webinars have that have been hosted by the BBA in the past as well we'll hope to have some time for questions and either way if we do have time or if we don't we'll post some of those responses on on those links as well so you can go ahead and check those out afterwards if you want and then otherwise I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Fred Fred you may know has been had a 30-year career with 18t Alabama BellSouth South Central Bell before that the last nine years of that he was the president of a teen teen Alabama it's been a very active member in the community in Birmingham he has served as chair of the BBA in the past the BCA has helped with the United Way work the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind parka Birmingham ed Foundation he's been very involved all around town and some great organizations but the role that we're most thankful for right now is his role as interim president and CEO at the BBA it's unprecedented times and we were really proud and glad to have friend with his sleeves rolled up helping us through so many of these issues so with that Fred I will hand it over to you to help us sort it out and give us all the wisdom and guidance you've got for us Thank You Jessica don't get your hopes up too high here Jessica welcome first of all Jessica I want to thank you for your leadership of the Breck and all that you've done and for the support of JPMorgan Chase as well we are at the the BBA where we're continuing our focus on our mission which is as Ben will continue to be to lead the regional group energy and deliver services to our businesses and to our partners that create high-quality jobs and move us toward a resilient economy we um we have been over the last eight weeks our organizational lives have been changed significantly as I'm sure of yours have I am speaking to you now from the middle of what is still a pretty much a desolate downtown Birmingham area right at the corner of Fifth Avenue north and 20th Street and there's still not a lot of folks not a lot of folks down here obviously we've been focused most recently on two things first we've been focused on bringing accurate up-to-date information to businesses throughout our region from and we've really tried to focus in on getting information out there that's from trusted sources making sure that we keep it up-to-date as we go throughout time there's a lot of changes in what we're all dealing with every day we all know that and all the bands and stuff we've are we keep on our website as Jessica said it's Birmingham Business Alliance comm if you go there you will see pretty quickly a link to go to the code 19 resource site so please go there if you need information on anything and if you need to ask a question there's an ask a question feature on there and we mean that to be if you need to ask a question about anything feel free to ask that and we will respond to you rapidly second bein focused on helping businesses whether their way through this pandemic especially focused on small and mid tier companies in our region we've been able to reach out to over 550 companies during the last eight weeks to provide assistance we started really probably dealing more with the lone PPP loan process yeah the a loan process and assisting businesses with those applications and the process that they needed to go through over the last week to ten days we did our focus on - on - returning to work reopening our work places and bringing information to businesses about what what what they should be looking at and what they should be considering in that in that time period businesses really have two questions I hear one first question is when when do I have the ability to make my own decision to open my business which is largely controlled by by the state or the county and then the second and probably more important question is what requirements should I follow in order to open my business safely and so we are you're gonna hear today a lot of great information on that second question I've been I've been able to preview some of the information you're gonna hear and I'm gonna tell you it's going to be it's really it's really gonna be helpful I want to thank Janelle on it at the little law firm of being with us I want to thank all of our investors that are on this call for your support of the BBA whenever you get in trying times like this whenever you really tend to focus on that support and how helpful it is to us in order to achieve our mission and to help the business community grow in our region thank you very much for attending today and with that I will turn it back to Jessica and I will be introducing Janelle and Janelle honor is a is it shareholder at littler Mendelson and she is the past lecture as well and she has a lot more experience in this chair than I do for sure and she's brought some great resources today her law practice primarily focuses on employment law specifically representing management in both employment counseling and employment litigation over the past couple months she's been very involved with writing several different articles related to Tobin 19 the rapidly changing covered 19 landscape this is her fifth webinar on giving guidance to businesses working through several these issues related to cover 19 so she's got some great information that she'll be able to share and I'm not going to take any more time with an intro cuz I know I've seen these slides and she's got a lot of great stuff you'll want to be taking notes Janelle I'll turn it over to you thanks Jessica and thank you Fred I'm so pleased to be here not only with Birmingham Business Alliance but also with Breck I'm brick has a special place in my heart I worked with y'all for for two years and love loved the group and loved those who are part of it those of you who are on the webinar if you're not currently involved as a BBA investor or as a part of Breck which is the Birmingham regional Enterprise Council that's really focused on small businesses if that works for your business model please reach out and be involved there are so many great resources I know I continue to rely on BBA for almost daily updates right now on kind of 19 information and so I just can't stress enough what a great network it is just to get you the resources that you need right now so happy to be here we're gonna get started as Fred said this is my disclaimer slide we've got a lot to talk about and we're going to be moving fast and so again this will be available on the slides to you later so don't feel like you've got to write everything down but if you've got questions we're going to try to get the questions at the end and an important thing for you to know is we don't know everything today and and what we know today keeps changing from one example I was tweaking a slide last night because the ESC changed some guidance within 24 hours they had issued guidance for employers on one thing and then they took it back the next day and so what we're telling you today unfortunately may change in the future but this is helping businesses do the next best thing with the information we have now and the guidance we have from the ESC from you know the CDC from OSHA from the Department of Labor we've spent a lot of time in the last few months looking at guidance and making our best decisions based on the information we have right now so always helpful to remember this is a changing environment rapidly changing and as always this is a webinar for information make sure you are following up with your own attorneys with regards to true legal counsel on these issues so what we're going to talk about today are six different areas you know we kind of skipped to the how to reopen and don't always talk through whether and when and so we're going to talk through that a little bit at first then go through how you go about telling your employees back if you've been shut down during this time they've been furloughed or if you had laid them off permanently then what to do with exposure situations in your workplace those of you who have not been open during this time that's not going to be a new experience for you we've had a lot of manufacturers a lot of essential workers who have been already dealing with this and employers dealing with this who stayed open but it'll be new if you have not had those policies in place then maintaining a safe workplace making sure that you've got all the protocols in place before you return employees to your workplace it's been a little bit on PPP I'm not your PPP expert as Fred said there's been a lot of great content from VBA about PPP loans but just let me make sure you've got that on your radar so that you're asking the right questions of the though of the PPP experts as you're returning people to work and then some talk about contingency planning stick with us to the end we're going to have questions and we're going to also have a giveaway you know our firm has put together a ton of different toolkits for employers so instead of having to pay by the hour they can purchase a toolkit that's got guidance and it's got policies and it's got forms that they can use we're going to give away a couple of the return to work tool kits that littler is put together at the end of the webinar so stick with us for that and for questions I mean could have submitted them at the beginning but you also will open up the chat as we get towards the end and to take more of your questions so first and foremost putting things in sequence you know before we talk about how to open we need to really decide whether and when and as as Fred said some of that is whether and when you have the ability to make the decision to reopen i'm currently under the safer at home order that were under only certain businesses can reopen we have moved into instead of a shelter at home into a safer at home and so we're moving forward under the state order but there still are limitations that you don't have the decision decision yet to make whether or not you can reopen when the state order says that your business can reopen you then have got to go through and make the decision when and whether it's going to be right for you to reopen just because the state lift the restriction and says you can doesn't mean you're ready to reopen doesn't mean you're ready to bring employers back or to bring customers back so the first practical suggestion we've got is and thinking through this you've got to really address it with a multidisciplinary team oh this is easier for large employers look at all these groups on here that are really who you need to be coordinating with smaller organizations smaller businesses like the ones that are often a part of breck you don't always have these separate departments one person may be playing the role of three for all of these areas so you want to make sure whoever is working for your company in addressing these type of issues is involved in the team who is making the decision of when to reopen and then that team will also work together to talk about how to reopen so sales and marketing you know are you gonna have sufficient customers to support a hundred percent reopening you know just because you open up your doors doesn't mean that people are ready to shop with you or ready to have your non-essential medical you know whatever your if you're a dentist and maybe they're not ready to come back and have their teeth cleaned and so if you're not going to have the same customer client flow you know what percentage do you need in order to be able to recall employees and to be able to support all of the costs of reopening and so thinking through that with sales and marketing people your facilities group who's working on the logistics of your building are you gonna have sufficient cleaning supplies disinfectant those have been hard to come by of light and so will there be toilet paper will there'll be paper towels will you be able to get personal protective equipment or what we've been calling PPE and that's one of the acronyms and everyone knows that PPE means now and in the past only employment lawyers' knew what that meant with regards and and people who worked in factories so are you gonna have that personal protective equipment available can you get it when you order it will it come in in time all those things where do possess'd need to be positioned do you need different types of plastic sheeting to keep people apart all those things need to be thought through can you get that equipment in time and if you can't then you're going to have to delay when you open back up real estate do we have space to provide a social distancing - can we bring everybody back at once - do we have to you know bring smaller groups back at a time because not everyone we don't have the room to bring our entire workforce back and keep everyone six feet apart how are we going to communicate through public relations in the event of an exposure how are we going to communicate internally with our employees working with your lawyers and what what do the number one we've got to make sure we're buying by the ordinances that are in place abiding by any cities or ordinances any County orders any state orders making sure that we are in compliance with all of those and so it's a lot to think through your in-house employment Council or if you use outside counsel like what I do your HR folks and government relations people who are kind of working with roots who are dealing with these orders dealing with these ordinances they have been kind of in the trenches during all this time and they're going to probably be your leaders for determining whether and when to get back to work and again you may not have people in those exact positions that you probably have resources that you utilize in order to make decisions relating to those areas so you want to make sure those people are on your team and going through this decision-making process there are lots of resources out there these are just some that I pulled from from BBA rachel is great richlum sent me a bunch of resources at BBA tracts you've got indus ry groups you've got groups in the specific area where you are operating you've got government groups and so they're all in conversation right now talking about how does my specific industry get back to work and what does that look like and so you need to engage with those other groups you're not the only restaurant reopening in Birmingham you're not the only daycare reopening in Birmingham reach out to others in that industry places like DBA and Breck is where so much of those relationships are built and where so much of that networking takes play reach out to BBA if you don't have those resources in place yet but there are so many industry groups and so many groups in an Alabama business groups that are focused on this and can talk through with you issues that are specific to your area of employment its reopening a manufacturer looks very different from reopening a restaurant and so you want to talk through who's doing this what have they done and what worked what hasn't worked there's so many lessons to be learned that gosh we learned so many lessons already right over the last eight weeks that don't be the test case for everything there's no reason for that so many people are thinking through so many things and such a unique and creative way to come up with solutions and problem-solving be a part of this group search them out use their knowledge and implement the things that they're doing now this is just a little background everybody knows you know we've got a guidelines for opening up America again that came down from the White House and these are kind of the gate areas where we've got to get through these gates in order to go through different phases and so I'm not spend a lot of time on this you can go to that website guidelines for opening up America get again and go through again we're looking at symptoms in our community cases in our community hospital what's going on with regard to the numbers and our hospitals in our community to determine at what phase we can be at in on our reopening and phase one is for states and regions that have satisfied those gating criterias we are not quite there yet and that's as you know under our safer at home over that the state has entered we are not quite out of phase one opening we haven't reopen to restaurants we haven't reopened gyms we clearly have as you can see by my appearance so we are not even all the way to a phase one opening yet a lot of people are already looking towards phase two which won't happen and should or shouldn't happen we don't know what if I could predict every order that comes out from Montgomery or from any other capital in the United States right now I would not be on this webinar with you because I would have already retired a billionaire and so we don't know where we're going to be on the 15th of May we don't know what's going to happen next but what we can do is use the information we have again to make the best decision in preparing for what comes next so if we're not a phase 1 business you know we can't reopen shell phase 2 we need to be looking forward to that if we are a phase 1 business we need to determine if we are really going to want to open when we go to a complete phase 1 are we ready for that will we have the customer base that we feel like will support all of the expenses that go with reopening a business so again this is just all part of that thinking about the weather and the wind this was on mare Woodsen's Instagram yesterday I'll follow him he's got such great social media presence and I love seeing everything that he posts it's always very informative and often very just very engaging and inspiring and so I've appreciated his leadership during this time I've appreciated the responsiveness of the city to a lot of when the city issues the shutdown order and then issued the mask ordinance they've been very responsive and answering questions in clarifying and providing updated guidance and I think that's just been some great Birmingham leadership and so I certainly have appreciated that but this was from yesterday on his Instagram and so again we're looking at that data you can be tracking UAB data we are his one thing that Birmingham we're so lucky to have you a be in our community as a leader during this time during this crisis the kind of information that we can get from a local source like UAB is just so helpful and so reliable and you know we're lucky a lot of communities don't have that type of resource so make sure you're tracking that make sure you're taking a look at you know are we getting close to any of those gates that we will be able to to move past and again this is where we were yesterday and you will see on the 15th so what decisions made by the governor and you know and by all of the resources you know dr. Harris has been amazing in his support and in his knowledge and so as we get closer to that and we'll keep tracking it and we'll keep providing more information and vba will be but you need to as part of your decision-making process be looking through all that as well so let's say you decided you are ready you're gonna open back up the governor has said you can the mayor has said you can jefferson county has said you can and you have your you're ready to do it you think your customers will be there and so you're ready to call employees back we've got to figure out how to do that calling employees back if you're a really small business is a much easier decision-making process and of course it depends on what status your employees were in were they in a furlough or temporary layoff status or were they in a permanent layoff did you have to pull a them off or let them go and so are you rehiring employees or are you calling people back from a temporary layoff the first thing you want to do in almost every case here is to review any type of handbooks you have any type of policies if you are an organized workplace make sure you follow your collective bargaining agreement with regard to recall and so if there is a policy in place for your employer about how people are called back in what order is that seniority is that some other merit-based system make sure you're following your policies there one big question we get a lot is well can we just can we call back we're only going to call back a portion of our workforce to start we don't think we're going to have a hundred percent business back when we open our doors so we want to start with the people who are low risk so we want to you know start with people who you know expose your toe bid is low risk for them well one problem with this is it can lead to an age discrimination case or a pregnancy discrimination case again it's as as you're well aware if you've ever been to any of my webinars or any other employment lawyers' webinars you can't make a decision on behalf of an employee if they have an underlying medical condition we're not the doctor we don't get to decide oh no that's too risky for you and take any type of almost one more paternalistic attitude towards an employee and say I'm not gonna let you do that because it's too risky for you that is up to the employee and that's to their doctor and so we've got to be careful and beware about issues with we're gonna call back our low-risk employees versus our leslie going to be younger employees and that could be a real issue in fact we've got the ESC had a webinar late last month that was very helpful I've encouraged you to go to the ESC gov website and pull that up excuse me and one of their questions from the webinar is can you exclude someone who's 65 years or older who does not have any symptoms and you just are afraid they're going to be high risk if they come to work and the EFC is very clear the answer to that is no that that can be a discrimination now if an employee comes to you and says I feel I am high-risk I'm over the age of 65 I don't want to come back to work that's a completely different discussion as opposed to you making the decision not to bring someone back because they are in a high-risk age category or because they're pregnant and that's another area that we've seen a lot of discussion about so how are you going to call them back is it going to be by seniority is it going to be somehow by merit we always suggest using some type of objective measurement if it's merit you know it's not just a subjective that person a better employee and the other is it's you've got underlying documentation to establish that like a written evaluation you may want to do it just for impact analysis if you're a really large employer and you want to make sure the decisions you're not making or somehow negatively impacting a group based on race or age or gender or any other protected category protected category one thing to think about is who do you need back who are the essential employees in what roles and it's certainly fine to call back certain groups of employees employees who are performing a certain function and allowing other people who can continue to telework to continue to telework or continue keeping other people in layoffs so if there are certain functions that you need to have them before you in different phases of reopening it's certainly fine to bring in certain groups performing certain functions that's an objective way of meeting your business needs so that's one thing to think of first who do you call back first but another thing to think through is you know just because you re open your doors just like we said you may not have the customers that you want back but in addition it doesn't mean your employees are going to report to work and we're hearing a ton of this from employers who are making plans to reopen are talking with employers about target dates and their employees are very concerned about coming back to work and are really pushing back about that and so you've got to walk through and think through those issues we've seen a ton of union involvement even across Alabama where we have not had as much union involvement in the recent past we've seen a ton of union leaders and unions responding to issues of the safe workplace and whether or not it's safe for employees to return and whether or not job sites should we open if you are not an organized employer you could still see some what we call concerted efforts to oppose return to work and so just because you're not don't have a union doesn't mean that your employees cannot engage in activity that's protected by the National Labor Relations Act and so you may see we're seeing lots of protests right now about open back up open back up but in other some areas we may start seeing more and more protests from employees not wanting to return to work not feeling it safe not doing their employers to take in the right steps necessary before bringing them back to work so we've got to realize that even if you're not unionized that concerted activity just by two or more employees talking through those concerns publicly even you know even protesting we've got to resist the temptation to discipline those workers engage with your outside lawyers on that before you plan your next step because it can still be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act even though you don't have a union in your shop so how do we engage with employees when they tell us I'm not comfortable coming back yet you've got to have your plan in place because now's the time when you've got to communicate with your employees about what the plan is going to be and so it is important to get engaged with them talk about the safety measures you're taking talk about what logistics you're putting into place to maintain social distancing the increased cleaning increased distance seeing what you're doing to make sure and reassure them that you are not going to bring them back until you're ready to keep them safe and that you've done the steps that you've needed to do to make sure that happens and so don't a lot of times you know in the short answer is yeah you you can make them come back you can say you either come back or I will fire you and someone else will come to work in your place and you're allowed to do that right now that's that's that's permitted but the longer answer and the management versus the legal answer is is that going to be helpful to just fire someone sometimes it is sometimes it creates an example and then suddenly everybody else is back at work sometimes it makes it much harder it's a long-term employee you've done a great job for you think through all the resources you're going to have to even vest it in that person in hiring and training and coaching and developing and so just because someone expresses the concern and that's really just the time to engage with them about what you're doing to make sure that the workplace is safe but they may still request the ability not to come to work if someone asks you you know I really want to keep working from home I'm not ready to come back at you know that's when you've got to engage with them about the why of that and again if the why is I think I might get sick then the response is you know well this is what we're doing to make sure you don't get sick it's the why is you know I have an autoimmune deficiency and my doctor says I'm high-risk and I shouldn't be working well that's going to trigger an ad a interactive process or under the Americans with Disabilities Act you need to engage with that employee and see if you're able to accommodate them that interactive process is the one I was talking about where the ESC is not even sure what you can't during that process they issued some guidance earlier this week which kind of opened up the floodgates where you could basically ask about an underlying medical condition and and make a decision to keep an employee out of the workplace if they have one of the underlying medical conditions that the CDC has identified as being high-risk and that they since pulled that back that guidance is no longer on their website they have not yet as of I checked the website last night it may be different this morning we'll see when we get off this webinar that I was in last night they have not engaged in what it was that they felt was misinterpreted and what the new guidance will be so as you can see even working with EFC guidance where it's a minute-by-minute update with regard to what you can and can't do so our best advice right now is if an employee is saying they cannot come back to work because of a disability and pregnancy can be a disability if it's high-risk and so just being pregnant is not a disability under the ADA a but if you receive information from an employer's employees doctor saying this employee is pregnant and I and should not be working right now because of the koban 19 exposure then you should work to accommodate that employee under the ATA again you wouldn't do that you wouldn't say I know you're pregnant I don't think you should work that's not up to you to decide but if you do receive and engage with that employee and there are medical issues there and then that would be uncovered under the ABA so here's here's the rub if our employees have been working from home a lot of ours have been has been telling working like I have been it's really gonna be hard moving forward to say that that's an undue hardship and we can't allow that to continue it doesn't mean we have to allow it to continue for everyone doesn't mean that we have to allow it to continue forever but during this period when we've got I've continued cousin 19 exposure concerns there are going to be certain employees with medical conditions that if they bring it they bring sources medical conditions and their doctor says they should not be working it's going to be really hard for an employer to say well I can't let them continue to telework during this time if you have employees who have been on leave during this time and that's also leave is considered an accommodation into the a da says the same thing there it's going to be hard to say I can't let that person continue on leave and so if you offer work there's no a DA issue involves an employee coming back you've taken all the safety issues that you need to and communicated with about them and they full-on refused and are not going to come back as I said you don't have to pay them you don't have to l t them take the PTO or vacation a good employer who's engaging with employees and wants to bring it's a good employee back these are things you may want to do but there's no requirement and especially if it's not a good situation with the employee they may be eligible for mandatory sick leave not in Alabama not in Birmingham but I know a lot of times we have employers who on these webinars who are in other states in other cities and so you know be mindful there could be a local rule that you've got to follow they're not going to be qualified for the SFC are a lien and we've had many many webinars on FF CRA you know you know just to remind you if you're an employer under 500 the SF cr8 kicks in with additional paid sick leave and with some additional kind of what we've been calling FMLA plus leave per child care so those are paid leave options they're not qualified for that you know just saying I don't want to work I'm not comfortable working that doesn't qualify them so unless they meet one of the other six reasons for qualification they've chosen tene they're caring for some what kind of 19 they have childcare issues do to cover 19 all those reasons then that would just automatically trigger and they should be disqualified from unemployment if they refuse to come to work and workers available I put a but there because as you know Alabama Department of Labor is overloaded with unemployment claims and particularly you know the ones related to cover 19 so many of them were just being coded Kobin 19 and being granted and employers have been good about helping employees get unemployment when needed during this time but many employers are concerned what's going to happen when these employees don't want to come back to work because they're making so much now under unemployment benefits so in Alabama we've got unemployment weekly benefits our captain's I think now 245 a week 275 a carry member and you know now that we have the federal benefit which is an additional six hundred a week on top of that so you've got up to 875 a week for unemployment benefits if a person qualifies and depending on how much they work and how much they make but for there's a tipping point there for some employees where they may make more staying on unemployment than coming back to work so employers are concerned about how to call those people back and if they will come back the Alabama Department of Labor there's a great resource out called business rights plus kovin 19 that's coming from Chamber of Commerce and the docent area and the Alabama Department of Labor as part of that and it talks about how to work through making sure that doesn't happen and the steps to take you should be communicating with employees you know in advance about the recall date when calling them back and to create a roster and they've got some great resources there and the Alabama the Department of Labor website for doing that and then if they refuse to return to work you inform alabama department of labor in writing don't try to call them right now that'll make you crazy not your call that you can upload it to their website and that should take care of the issue letting you know letting them decide the unemployment issue but informing them that you have work available and have recalled employees so hopefully that will help with that another big issue we're seeing in this area is child care child care is one of our systemic issues that people are only now figuring out Oh ready to recall employees but there's not enough childcare options right now in Birmingham because many daycares continue to be closed so what do I do in an employee I've called an employee and they can't come back to work because they don't have any childcare again this is where were as employers my best advice is to engage on that I sit on the board of directors of a small nonprofit childcare center and we're really struggling with how and when to we opened and we have a target date now for the Tuesday after Memorial Day that is a target day or working towards it because again we've got to have all the resources in place that'll let us reopen we've got to figure out how to maintain the less than twelve kids in a room that are required understand safer at home order you know we've had the mask ordinance in Birmingham that we've worked through now with the city of whether or not children in daycares have to be wearing masks and at what age there's just a ton to work through and these childcare centers operate a razor thin margins so if they don't have they're the type of employer or if they open back up and they don't have a hundred percent enrollment all the children are not back it's very hard for them to operate on a third of their enrollment coming back half of their enrollment coming back a lot of these groups have tried to get PPP loans and were unable to either in the first or second round the group I work with very luckily got one in the second round which is why we can do a reopening without being a hundred percent enrollment we wouldn't be able to afford to pay teachers if we didn't have everyone back without the PTP loans so how is the business can you engage on that issue child care resources voices for Alabama children they're all working really hard in Alabama right now to try to make sure that child care centers are able to reopen engage with them find out how you can help is there PPE that daycare centers need that your group can provide is there financial resources that you can allocate towards sponsorships to help them stay open or reopen there's just it this is a systemic bigger system problem but Alabama is not going to be able to get back to work if people do not have the child care they need and I will tell you right now that that availability was already very very hard to get into a quality child care center before this happens and so now so many not reopening it's going to continue to be something that you're going to have to work with your employees on and hopefully engaged in the bigger system in Birmingham and Alabama on helping us solve that problem what so what if you offer work and they actually say they'll come back that could happen it should happen the hope is gonna have it what do you do next for some people who have been had a real break in service and they weren't just on a temporary layoff I mean maybe you know reaching back out saying hey I'm rehiring employees now I want you to come back yeah you're gonna have to go through kind of your whole checklist of rehiring that you did before which make sure you've got the time to do that and that you're keeping that in mind for other employees you're gonna make sure that you develop training orientation for the the new normal so if they're coming back you want to make sure they're going to be on all the systems that you're putting in place all the policies that are going to be changing and procedures and then keep an eye on things like you know are they going to be eligible when they return for the paid sick leave if you're an employer who provides FF CRA again of less than 500 employee employer which is is most of the folks probably on the phone on zoom' I should say then they're not going to have a waiting period for eligibility for EPS L so you're going to have to make sure you've got that posted has we've already communicated it with the sending out the poster if not let's coordinated out that let me help you with that and so then in addition your employees are going to be eligible for and this is also any public employer I should say so in a private employer under 500 and then any public employer what about this emergency Federal Medical Leave Act or this FMLA plus you might think if they when they first come back they won't be eligible but if they've been they were eligible before and they were laid off or let go before December 31st which were in and then you've called them back and they were eligible before they lost and they specifically carved carved in that into the law that they'll continue to be eligible so you've got to be prepared make sure you have your FF CRA policies all in place again your postings in place you've thought through the payroll issues for that I'm working with a lot of major big public employers who are having you know to figure out payroll issues because they've got so many employees and they've got to provide this additional age so a lot to think of there as long as we're talking about leaves you know make sure this is going to be a time of lots of compliance with leave issues make sure you've got resources extra to address that again if you're a multi-state or multi City employer make sure you're complying across the board with that in those areas all right so exposure for positive employees this is your calling employees back you've got to have place your exposure control plans and this could be an entire hour loan webinar and in fact it was I did one you go to my two littler comm and pull up my bio it'll link you to a recorded webinar on what to do an employee test positive for cousin 19 and so if you've got if you have not been dealing with that issue and it's completely new to you please go to that and use that as a resource but it's important to know when zips and employees home we've got to understand how to do contact tracing the CDC website has got great resources for this as well so what you what's basically if an employee is exhibiting symptoms we send them out until they can no longer have the symptoms within 72 hours without any medication we don't require them to get a code in nineteen test because they're not always available as they become more available in our community then it's helpful to send them for one or ask them to get one now that the availability has increased we don't do contact tracing for symptoms we only do that when we have a positive confirmation or either a test or confirmed by a doctor that based on their exposure and symptoms that it's believed because of nineteen that's we find out who has been working around them in our workplace and who's had direct contact with them so direct is close within six feet and then it needs to be continuous so over a period of time not just I walked past them in the hallway now if somebody when you're talking this is something to keep in mind you've got to keep confidentiality here we do not release information or names of who has tested positive or as a confirmed positive case we talk to that employee find out who they have been around at work and who they've had this direct contact with we self isolate the employees we send them home for two weeks and and then we also self quarantine the employees they have been in direct contact with those employees go home for two weeks and that's where that stops it doesn't just keep continuing down the line it's the employee and then the people they've been in the direct contact with that's who we self quarantine is sent home it does it it's not been the people they've been in direct contact I would just continue down down the line so we want to make sure we have increased our cleaning in the workplace and that's going to include contacting the individuals who are doing that cleaning make sure that we've got the resources there we've got our cleaning crew those are going to be cleaning Moore knows that we're going to want to increase this infection we're going to want to institute policies where people in the workplace are wiping down doorknobs wiping down work areas wiping down common areas that needs to be done throughout the day and so there's just a lot of it and then office logistics making sure there's a lot of employers who have done you know you come in one way and then you leave the other way so that there's no passing in stairwells no passing in common areas marking off six-foot distances making sure people understand the meanings right now will continue to be virtual even if you're in the office and there's just a lot of making sure your desks or six feet apart or your work areas so much logistically to think through and then think through how you're going to respond to complaints what if you know people I've heard Joe has come in 19 and he's still here how do you work through that who's going to respond to those if you have an HR department make sure they're engaged on the dealing with these kind of perceived positives as opposed to a confirmed diagnosis and then reporting to OSHA we've got some new OSHA guidance that came out not too long ago where OSHA recordable illnesses in the workplace you know you what OSHA is saying right now is if there is objective evidence that the Cova 19 cases work related then you record it so there's really going to be objective evidence and so this takes some of the load off employers but for example if you've got a cluster of cases that have happened in your workplace where one person was positive and even though you self quarantined and sent people home that were in direct contact if those people get sick you can't just ignore the fact that they most likely got sick because they were working next to someone who had a positive diagnosis and that would be something that should be OSHA recordable and it's and if the employee provides you reasonable information that would lead you to the knowledge that they got it at work and so you can't just ignore it but it also is going to be harder to find the objective evidence to record it as an OSHA issue and now they is different if you are a healthcare emergency response employer your OSHA recordable obligation is different there so those things you want to have in place and have thought through they need to be communicated to employees need to have a policy on it and and you've got to have that before your employees come back to work maintaining a safe workplace is obviously abut most importance as we've been talking about so you want to think about things like do I want to require face coverings if you're in the city of Birmingham right now you you must and how are you going to do that are you going to provide the face coverings you're going to let the employee or their own donning and doffing what that means is do you have to play it pay the employee for the time it takes to put the mask on and off or should if you are providing the mask you met you will have to pay the employee if you are requiring them to wear the mask and they have to wait in line to pick up a mask from you then you should include that in the compensable time if they are allowed to take the mask home and launder it themselves and they can wear it to and from work then that is not going to start their works at their content workday's so you've got to think through those issues what about accommodating employees who can't wear masks and some employees have medical conditions where they they cannot wear a mask they weren't able to breathe we've had an issue I have had with an employer who they had a deaf employee and they couldn't communicate in the workplace when everyone was wearing masks so they went to face shields and so these are all things that you've got to think through with regard to face coverings are you going to require them or are you going to recommend them what is your policy going to be if someone refuses to wear them screening workers are you going to take temperature checks or thermal imaging are you going to ask the questions that we've all asked if you've had to go to the bank recently about travel or about symptoms and questionnaires and have your employee sign and attestation about that are you going to allow employees to check the temperature at home and report it when they get to work if you're gonna have a temperature check at work you've got to consider privacy issues if you record a temperature check first it's a hundred point four is the cutoff so anything under that 103 and under that you would not record but if someone is 100 point four or higher you would need to record that and that would need to be done privately and the record would need to be kept separately from a personnel file it's a medical record so you've got to make sure whoever's conducting the checks is trained to do it they have to wear some type of protective clothing so an apron that's got to be changed throughout the day and so if you were doing those type of record checks you've got to make sure that you have the policies in place and the training before you start conducting those the esv has issued guidance saying that we were allowed to as employers to take tests to test employees even for Kevin 19:00 they've got to me accurate and reliable which is kind of the rub we've got either diagnostic tests that would diagnose someone as having 19 or we now looking at the different antibody tests and those are all still in development we have some big employers who are thinking through how to use those and when but it's not something that right now all most employers are going to be able to utilize and any type of way that makes sense do you think it through you test everybody who comes to work you know all you know is they don't have kovat on that day it doesn't mean or it hasn't showed up for you know to be tested on that day it hasn't developed into something a test can detect so it's a little hard to think through how testing is going to help employers but I think we'll be seeing that more and more this I just wanted to you know make sure you know we are keep mindful that the information we're getting from the governor's office from dr. Harris has been very helpful they're obviously focused on the and helping us talk through the weather questions and we've got to be concerned some about exposure and particularly you know one thing to know workers comp is not necessarily going to kick in for these koba 19 diagnosis because it's very hard to it's going to be very hard to establish again that it was exposure at work and which individuals have have come down with kind of a 19 some states are trying to expand workers comp particularly for essential workers we've already seen a lot of those efforts shut down by different industry groups because it really would have opened up workers comp to just an unbelievable amount and employers are not going to be able to handle that type of exposure so so we haven't seen that in Alabama but it could be coming up next safety is definitely going to be what we see is kind of the new issue for employers and so that's just something I want you to keep in mind that as we start seeing more and more kind of what people are focused on next workplace safety can clients are gonna be just a huge part of that and Willian where I think we're going to see strikes about it we're going to see a lot of organized efforts and hopefully it'll be good end but it's just something to know that Safety's got to be at the front of every decision you're making right now Jessica I know we're running out of time we got lots more to talk about but no no if y'all wanted to at this point see if we've got any questions before we need to wrap up I think that'd be great you know we've got we've got a chat function if anyone wants to to post a question or two we might have time for literally one to two questions and we also have a door prize that we want to be able to give out so before we start taking questions I don't see any yet we're gonna open up the chat room but I will go ahead and get two random numbers from Fred McCallum so that we can draw for our door prizes and you know maybe you can give us a quick heads-up on what these are I know it's return-to-work toolkit yeah yeah it's gonna include it's a guide that we put together and then a policy that can be used you can there they're designed to you can change them up for your particular workforce and then we've got some forms that will be helpful to use for some of these different things we've been talking about thanks Fred if you don't mind giving two random numbers between one and eighty and then we'll use those to pick from the people who've registered all right and thanks Jenelle again two numbers ten and 45 good deal okay well you're gonna use those and we're gonna match them up with everybody so we'll do that while we look through these questions let's see the first the first question I have is that there's an employee that has no conditions but states that a spouse and/or children do have pre-existing conditions employees nervous about bringing something home from work any anything that beautifully in that kind of situation yeah that's gonna really be more of a are you able to accommodate that situation we've seen a lot of essential workers they've had to almost kind of isolate themselves from family members which is really hard but that's had to occur for a lot of employees who have been continuing working we have that situation here in my house we have my mother-in-law lives with us and she's in her late seventies and so we're worried about that as well but again it's going to be talking through are you able to accommodate that is that and that's not going to be the individual employee is not disabled and so that's not gonna be a situation where you know you are trying to cover an issue under the ADEA for that particular employee but does it trigger any of the SFC or a leave any of the emergency paid sick leave if you've got to provide that and then just are you able as that employee able to telework are you able to show that employee that all the safety you know they're gonna come in and you're gonna make sure that they're not exposed in the workplace and so by providing them with a mask making sure everyone's wearing masks making sure everything's wiped down making sure that they're never within six feet of someone will that make them comfortable enough to know that there's not an exposure issue there for them to be able to work and if not are you able to accommodate that issue or not and so it's that's going to be just really a back and forth communication and sometimes employees are very hesitant and then when they come into the workplace and can see what you've done to make sure they're safe they feel a whole lot better about the exposure that's great we've got several others here we'll take one more what about our arbitration agreements for returning workers advisable or enforceable um it's a good question and I'll be honest I haven't thought thought through that so this is going to be this off the top of my head you know if you have an arbitration agreement in place then obviously you know you've already have it in place you can you know have an employee as your returning employees to make that change and decide to implement an arbitration agreement in exchange for a return to work his name would be the bargain for that but the question would be you know what it's going to cover and why it is that you feel like you need it at this time we don't know right now what type of exposure issues we're going to be seeing with regard to litigation and so we probably will have a lot of employment litigation and we don't know yet if courts will say if that's an enforceable arbitration agreement or not currently you know I would say it would be under the way courts have interpreted hiring an employee and making their employment you know that that's you know you're hiring them and so they agree to arbitration as part of that hiring process but we don't know if there may be some carve out for this in the future so it's really be helpful talk through that with your employment lawyer and I don't think I don't know that it's going to be enforceable just to carve out kind of an 19 and so it's just you know this is the time we're bringing back employees and it's the time that we've been wanting to implement this arbitration agreement you can we do it now I think that's more likely it's going to be an enforceable agreement that's great I know we have several other questions here and we will try to get answers to those on that code 19 resource page the BBA has along with the slides that I mentioned earlier I just want to go ahead and thank everybody for joining us thank you Jenelle for all the good content I know there's a lot more to be covered so so make sure to go to that resource page and look through the slides and then it might be worth reaching out to Jenelle to see about many specific situations that you guys have that she could help with Fred thank you again as well for for all the guidance that you've given us it's it's tricky times for everybody so it does help to have a lot of the resources that VBA is is giving I think people are appreciating that more than ever before it's Jessica really appreciate everybody and I wanna appreciate all of your support of the BBA thank you thank you and real quick just the two winners you'll be hearing from Janelle but that's Peggy throwing from McWane Science Center and Raquel Melton from plastic pack packaging so congrats and you'll be you'll be getting some info from Janelle on this on your packages yes thanks again everybody good luck is yummy thanks everyone bye bye