According to a report released by the employment law firm BlankRome LLP, seventy-one percent of employers in a survey said they did not have a pre-existing pandemic or emergency management plan activated in response to the COVID-19 virus.
The firm surveyed 150 clients between March 19th and March 23rd to gauge concerns regarding the pandemic, the clients represented an array of businesses across industries and geographic regions. They asked about emergency management planning, COVID-19 crisis impact and communications, travel/policy changes, employee symptoms and testing in the workplace, policy decisions and staffing adjustments.
Their results show that 12% of employers surveyed received complaints from employees who were concerned with safety issues related to the virus. These complaints did not fall within traditional categories, indicating how unprecedented the challenges are in responding to the virus. Over 93% of employer responses to the type of complaints received were not within the traditional framework of employment complaints, things like disability discrimination, retaliation and OSHA.
The report also found that 62.8% of employers who were surveyed had prohibited all international travel, and 38.5% had prohibited domestic work-related trips. About 7.7% of employers said they are requiring employees to inform the company of their personal travel plans so that they can be aware of exposure risks.
Just over half (51.5%) of respondents had moved to work from home full time, and 37% had moved to partial work from home.
Only 7% of the employers surveyed had workers who had tested positive, while 29.5% did not know whether their employees had been tested.
Although these are certainly unprecedented times, they are a reminder that it is important to have an emergency plan in place, and to have the tools to educate your workforce on the plan so it can be executed if necessary.
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