Poll: Personal Coronavirus Permanent Impact

[appleman2006]

Our work place is telling people to stay at home if they are sick. And our government is saying they will be covered under our employment insurance plan immediately on the first day they stay home. But there are things that are not yet clear. To be covered under EI you need a doctors certificate and doctors are only saying to come in if you are a severe at risk case. I see a lot of potential for chaos. I know that our ability to service our customers will dry up really fast if employees do not show and so the domino chain continues.
Being involved in trying to decide what is the best thing to do for just our employees and customers gives me a greater appreciation for what our government officials are facing right now.
It would be lovely to be able to tell employees to work from home but there are hundreds of industries where that is not even a remote possibility. pun intended.

I see a lot of potential for chaos also.
And abuse too.

You think?

[Josh]

Our work place is telling people to stay at home if they are sick. And our government is saying they will be covered under our employment insurance plan immediately on the first day they stay home. But there are things that are not yet clear. To be covered under EI you need a doctors certificate and doctors are only saying to come in if you are a severe at risk case. I see a lot of potential for chaos. I know that our ability to service our customers will dry up really fast if employees do not show and so the domino chain continues.
Being involved in trying to decide what is the best thing to do for just our employees and customers gives me a greater appreciation for what our government officials are facing right now.
It would be lovely to be able to tell employees to work from home but there are hundreds of industries where that is not even a remote possibility. pun intended.

I see a lot of potential for chaos also.
And abuse too.

This kind of attitude is exactly what motivates American employees to keep coming into work sick. They’re afraid that if they call off, they’ll get fired, and their career won’t ever have a chance for a promotion.

What really causes chaos is a workplace wide outbreak where all your employees are sick at the same time and too sick to work through it. If you’re concerned about abuse of sick leave policies, you should have been addressing that in the past.

[Josh]

As mentioned, I'm curious to see how this is handled. If an employee is new, they might not have any vacation time to use. What happens then? I'm sure HR is gonna have a field day with this

I would describe what I expect HR to go through in the next little while as a nightmare.
And Josh's idea of hiring extra people to cover possible worker shortages just makes me smile. I sit on the board of an organization that represents food processing companies across the country here in Canada and there are holes in most of their production lines at the best of times. Finding good employees takes a lot more than just turning a tap on. Most will try and fill the gaps with temps if they can because you really cannot hire good workers when you cannot at least give them some confidence that there is a long term position available.

So what’s the alternative? If you have a workplace that can only maintain adequate staffing levels by having employees come in sick during flu/cold season, you’ve got a big problem.

A lot of employers have basically counted on employees working when they have a bad cold. This wasn’t a good policy, and it’s a really bad policy now. It leaves you unprepared for an outbreak like this.

The government in the U.S. has made promises of financial support for businesses affected by the coronavirus. All I hear is concern for employees somehow sneaking off and being lazy, and concern about the bottom line.

If we get a Wuhan or Italy situation, there won’t be a bottom line, a workplace, or your business anymore. It’s time to quit playing games.

[steve-in-kville]

If you’re in Myerstown/Lebanon County, you may want to practice “social distancing” from certain plain people.

Oh dear....

[mike]

As mentioned, I'm curious to see how this is handled. If an employee is new, they might not have any vacation time to use. What happens then? I'm sure HR is gonna have a field day with this

I would describe what I expect HR to go through in the next little while as a nightmare.
And Josh's idea of hiring extra people to cover possible worker shortages just makes me smile. I sit on the board of an organization that represents food processing companies across the country here in Canada and there are holes in most of their production lines at the best of times. Finding good employees takes a lot more than just turning a tap on. Most will try and fill the gaps with temps if they can because you really cannot hire good workers when you cannot at least give them some confidence that there is a long term position available.

So what’s the alternative? If you have a workplace that can only maintain adequate staffing levels by having employees come in sick during flu/cold season, you’ve got a big problem.

The rest of us just work a little harder and longer. The idea that you should plan on half of your employees missing work because of sickness by being overstaffed shows a lack of how business works. If you would know the cost of labor relative to net profits for food businesses you would understand this would very quickly wipe out profits. If you don't believe this I will cite real world numbers.

[appleman2006]

It is really easy in theory Josh. It is much more difficult in real life. We do address abuse issues but we need to be very careful. Often you must look for patterns over a period of time. You cannot assume abuse simply because people are missing a few days of work now and then . They may actually be doing the responsible thing and you must start out with that mindset.
The problem is that when abuse does take place it is your responsible workers that take the brunt of it because they must fill in the gaps. Or it starts to reflect on the level of service to your customers.
Anybody that thinks it is easy has never actually done it. Of that I am sure.

[appleman2006]

On a lighter note I am wondering what the next step is. We have gone from a hand shake to a fist pump to an elbow bump.
Any suggestions what might be next?

[AnthonyMartin]

On a lighter note I am wondering what the next step is. We have gone from a hand shake to a fist pump to an elbow bump.
Any suggestions what might be next?

Regarding the elbow bump. It is recommended you cough or sneeze into your elbow, not your hand. Please don't put your snotty elbow anywhere near my personal space.

[mike]

On a lighter note I am wondering what the next step is. We have gone from a hand shake to a fist pump to an elbow bump.
Any suggestions what might be next?

The good old fashioned Facebook poke? I don't know if that still exists.

[Dan Z]

The numbers are driving the world's response here.

The NY Times has gotten copies of the CDC projections for this event from a few weeks ago, where they estimate a range of scenarios for the US that show that between 2.1 million and 214 million Americans will be infected. This means between 2.4 million to 21 million hospitalizations, and 200,000 - 1.7 million deaths. These scenarios assume a 2-3 person infection rate, a 3-12% hospitalization rate, and a .25 - 1% death rate. A vaccine wont be available until 2021.

Where this gets concerning is that there are less than 1 million hospital beds in the country, and less than 100K critical care beds with about 20,000 respirators. If the US can keep this closer to the best case scenario, or slow down the progress to spread out the timeline, the healthcare system might keep up. But, if we end up closer to worst case scenario, or the disease spikes too quickly, the system will be overwhelmed.

The CDC admits there are still many unknowns that could have up or down sides to these numbers, and many experrts are critical of the US response thus far, particularly related to disease testing.

In other words, this is not a media/political-driven panic, or government hysteria as some people claim, but the prudent actions of experts crunching the potential numbers. Panic and hoarding will do no good, and we can take heart that people are typically resourceful in crisis, but based on the numbers this has to be taken seriously.