Episode 21: IT and Disaster Preparedness

Welcome to the Workplace, a podcast by Cal Chamber. I'm Alan Zarenberg, Cal Chamber President. Joining me today is Erica Frank, Kal Chamber's general counsel and Executive Vice President. Today we are talking about how businesses can prepare themselves for emergency situations and what the responsibilities might be in the midst of natural disaster, major power outage, or other unforeseen events. Over the past couple years, in particular, California businesses have been affected by devastating wildfires at both ends of the state. In other states, floods and weather emergencies have created similar issues for companies. This summer, some areas of California will possibly experience lengthy power outages that may impact the ability of companies to operate. As usual, all this raises the question about how business owners can best equip themselves and their employees for the unexpected. So, Erica, in light of the wildfires we've had here in California, that utilities, it may be prudent for them is the right word that the regulators use to shut down power when we have a high wind, dry situation, what should employers do to prepare themselves before something bad happens?

Yeah, Ellen, that's a great question because in California in particular, we've had our share of natural disasters. And I think these all cause us to pause and think about what would we do in those situations and how are there ways in which we as a country company or as an employer can try our best to plan for some of these unexpected situations so that perhaps business can continue to operate, but more importantly, that our employees are able to either tend to the issues that they need to tend to personally, or they're able to be in a location or be able to continue doing their job. And if they can't, what are some assistance that they can seek out in order to continue paying the bills that they have to pay. One of the first things that employers should really think about is for one, having an emergency action plan, something that all California employers need to have. And I think years ago, when we didn't have a lot of wildfires, floods happened, but they weren't as frequent or as scary as perhaps they might appear to be. Now, there was the fire drills that nobody liked to be part of, but it's super important to have those fire drills, earthquake drills in California, particularly in Southern California in the Bay Area, there are high instances of earthquakes. These are some of the things that employers always had in the back of their mind a fire devastating a rather urban area that we saw in the Santa Rosa area, that we saw in la. Probably not on anybody's mind, rolling blackouts, power outages. These aren't things that we're prepared for like we are starting from when we were in elementary school doing those fire drills. For one, employers really should have that emergency action plan, communicate it to their employees. As far as who's going to inform the employees of a natural disaster or if we wake up and unfortunately the business has burned down, who within the organization is going to be notifying employees that unfortunately there isn't a place to report to work today? A couple of things too. For hire management for folks to think about. Can we operate without a brick and mortar location? Are there some employees that can work remotely? If so, do we have the equipment or are they capable of doing that? There are a lot of these things that we have to consider when we're starting to emergency.

So the situation that's most likely to occur this summer are the wildfire situation.

Yes.

I think you brought up a good point when you mentioned there are probably a lot of listeners who may not think they're in a danger area. And we found out from the Santa Rosa fire and the Montecito fire possibly that for many people who may not feel they're at risk, they may be at risk. And so everybody should have an emergency action plan.

That's right. The way the plan in my mind looks is, or at least the things that employers should be considering is one, can we continue servicing our customers and providing the services that we're there for? Whatever our business purpose is, can we keep operating businesses might be able to. Some might be very tech savvy, very Internet based and all you need is a smartphone and iPad and maybe you can pick up for other employers that's just not going to be the case. And you might have a situation where some employees can keep working and some can't. So one thing that really has to be on the forefront of employers minds, despite everything else that's happening in a time of disaster, is what is our obligation to our employees? We have an obligation to maintain a healthy and safe workplace. Which means maybe our business didn't burn down, but the fires and the smoke are so bad that our employees can't work. And we had Robert Mutri on our podcast a few weeks ago that talked about some regulations that Cal OSHA was entertaining that would require employers to provide respiratory masks to their employees who might be exposed to a certain air quality index level. Other situations might be you have employees who are classified as either exempt or non exempt. And how they're classified is going to depend upon how we pay them and how we treat them. If they have to go home for the day. For our hourly or non exempt employees, we pay them for the hours that they work. But if they report to work and there's no work for them to do, the law says we have to pay them at least half of their time. No more than four hours, no less than two hours, unless they're not working because an act of God, the utilities go out. So if PG&E decides to do rolling blackouts or there's a blackout on in the middle of someone's shift, the employer's not going to have to pay them for that time that they're not working. But if the employer says, you know what, there's a huge fire that has just erupted a mile away, the smoke is starting to impact the workplace here. We're sending everybody home, that hourly employee is still going to be entitled to at least half of his or her shift. No more than four hours, no less than two. Now, for an exempt employee, they are entitled to a full salary for any day that they work and any workweek that they work. So an exempt employee is going to be a little bit different. If an exempt employee is told to go home, they're going to get paid for that full day.

There are different industries, different businesses that are affected different ways. So let's talk about an office situation. So it may be you need to have a plan to let people work from home or a remote location if possible. But if you're a restaurant or a manufacturer where you have to be on site, you can't work remotely, can you?

You can't. And that's a real tough position for the employer to be. Right. Because the business doesn't have anybody to be able to. Well, there may not be a business to operate, but for the employees, there's no way for them to get paid.

So let's take maybe a restaurant. So you have to shut down for three days, you're not getting any revenue. Do you still have an obligation to your employees if they're exempt?

So if they're exempt and they're ready and willing to work and there is no work for them to. Yes, they still get that full paid week of time. That's a general rule. If they're taking personal time, which it doesn't sound like they're taking personal time, there's just no place for them to work. In your restaurant situation, it probably would be talking about maybe the manager, someone who meets the exemption, which is pretty difficult to meet, I would guess. In most restaurants, the employees are actually non exempt or hourly. So the business wouldn't have to pay them, but those employees still need to have some kind of compensation. Their compensation is lost. So the Employment Development Department, the edd, actually does provide assistance to employers and employees who might be displaced due to a natural disaster. And the employee can apply for unemployment insurance benefits during that time.

Okay, so even though you may not have revenue coming in, your employees may be able to recover some of their lost wages.

That's correct.

So some of these situations, you just don't know what the time is. But for a business that can have their workers work remotely, how do you keep track of their hours? Right. You need to be able to do so if you're going to have somebody so you can continue your revenue, you're going to ask them to work from home or remote location. You need to be set up to be able to keep track of their hours. Right?

That's a very good point, Ellen. Yes. So for our hourly employees, there's still the obligation of having clocking in, clocking out records. The employee would need to still take their rest break, would still need to take their meal break. So the messaging that the employer needs to convey to those employees is it's as if you're at work, all of the rules still apply. You're clocking in as you normally would, you're clocking out as you normally would, and you're still taking your breaks. That's really important to emphasize when we're talking about our hourly employees working remotely, whether it's a result of a natural disaster or just normal business operations.

So preparation once again is really a key component. If obviously, if you're a restaurant, you have perishables, if you don't have backup electricity, you could very well lose your inventory, so to speak.

That's right. And you know, one of the things that I think we're learning in the wake of some of the Cal OSHA regulations that I just mentioned that require the respiratory masks and even with the fires, the rolling blackouts now, employers almost have to be very mindful of what the weatherman says to find out. Okay, now they're giving us red flag warnings if it's a dangerous time for fires, employers should be looking at that and going, okay, we need to make sure that in the event something should happen, we're ready to roll. In the event that we do need to take action with the respiratory, the employers are going to have to start watching what the air quality looks like. And so these are some things that I think are the forefront of employers minds that hadn't been in the past.

So do you think it's important for depending on your size of your business, whether or not you have certain people who should be responsible for putting these plans together, such as your HR person, Certain things?

Absolutely. HR is a fantastic place to start and usually they are the ones that are keeping in mind not only the employee well being, but strategizing to make sure that the employer has the resources that it needs so it can continue operations. So human resources is a great place to start with formulating your emergency action plan, working with management, and trying to assess what things you can prepare for in the event of the unexpected.

So, Erica, one of the things we didn't talk about was how businesses should prepare for a disaster with their technology equipment. What kind of data you have, what kind of servers you have, whether it's on site or off site. Do you have a disaster plan for all your data and whether or not you rely on, say, credit cards and things like that?

That's an excellent point, Alan, because now in this day and age, most employers do have extensive records stored electronically. No longer are the days of the file cabinets full of paper that you could just throw into a anchor box and bring with you. So that is something that when you're preparing your emergency action plan to really work with your IT department, if you don't have an IT department to work with another outside entity that can help you plan for the worst with regards to your data, your credit card storage records, employee records, some that are very confidential. Do you have servers on site or do you decide you know what, we are in a high risk zone. We're going to move them off site so that we know that our data is protected.

So I think those are pretty basic things. Should you have your own servers or should you put them in the cloud so you don't have to be responsible if there's a disaster? So as you mentioned, employee records could very well be electronic, no longer paper. Can you make sure you can access those?

That's correct.

Okay. These are just things for everybody to consider. They're especially important for small business who may not have a robust IT department, but it applies to everybody. And once again, a disaster plan that deals with technology and data is really important for everybody. Thank you, Erica. Thanks for joining us on the Workplace. Please comment, subscribe and share. Cal Chambers podcast by visiting cowchamber.com.