Certain Measures for Uncertain Times: A Guide to Reopening After Covid-19 with CEO Ali Oromchian

Okay, we're going to go ahead and start with our intro so that we can promptly start at 1:01 as promised. For those of you that are new to this webinar series of reopening resources, I'm Jean St. Louis of Jean St. Louis Consulting and just want to kind of go over a little bit before we get started and I introduce our wonderful speaker for today. I would ask that if you have any questions, please put them in the Q and A tab versus the chat, although I will check both periodically and we'll answer the questions at the end. I will go ahead and moderate that for Ali. So the other thing that I'd like to say is I put out there like what state are you from? That's Ali and I were chatting. For those of you that were on earlier and were able to hear, we were just kind of curious. I said, I know I have clients all over the country and you know, not really sure who is hopping on today. But you know, let us know what state you're in. We're not using it for any reason or marketing, so please just understand it was just out of curiosity. The other thing is I'd love to connect with you on your social medias to see how you're doing and how your lives are going, how your practices are going. So feel free, share your handle with me and by all means follow us on Instagram or Facebook so you can follow us and we can talk beyond this webinar. So for today, I'm really, really excited. I don't know how most of you feel, but about Ali, if you know him, but I have known ali for over 20 some years now. I knew him when he was an attorney that was coming into the dental world and connected with him and really connected well. And we've become very good friends. And professionally my company uses HR for health and I would never have recommended HR for health if I hadn't really had the phenomenal I experienced that I have experienced using their firm. So I can tell you firsthand he's extremely knowledgeable and I think you're going to really enjoy today's presentation. What I think I admire about Ali the most is his down to earth approach. Very comfortable, very genuine and I think that's why he and I connected. I feel like I'm of similar mindset. I know that some of you that were on the webinars earlier in the week, you've heard me share that I had started a mastermind group about basically eight days after this kind of came to the world and Ali was the first person I called to say, hey, what do you think? I'm thinking of doing this mastermind group with like minded people. An attorney himself, an accountant, a marketing company, an insurance credentialing company, a dentist, a hygienist. Just so we as professionals could be thinking what we want to believe is ahead of where you were going with your own minds, but trying to be the resource for you that you could really feel safe in and secure in and know that we were not going to be spreading, you know, truths that weren't true or things that were out on the Internet that we just picked up on to just do webinars on just for the sake of doing webinars. So Ali is the co founder of HR for Health. He has been dynamic throughout this COVID 19 pandemic in really educating dentists. Not self serving whatsoever, really just educating dentists on what they need to know to be the best that they can be and to take care of their staff in the best way. And he's doing that with his own staff. So I also think Ali brings a unique approach to our world and what you're being faced with in that he's married to a dentist, so he has that inside scoop as well. So without further delay, I'd like to introduce to you, for those of you that have never met him, I think you'll grow to love him as I have Ali Aramchian from HR for Health. Ali, take it over.

Oh my gosh, Gene, that was the nicest and kindest introduction I think ever. I'm going to have you do all of mine from now on.

I appreciate it. I think you're being very, very generous, but I appreciate it nonetheless. And it's a pleasure to be here to be able to support everything that you're doing with the community. And it's exciting because as an industry we are all right now in a very exciting time because finally things are starting to move and things are starting to change and we might be opening up very, very soon. And so it's an exciting time, but yet a scary time. And that's a big part I think of why.

This webinar and so many things that you putting out and we're putting out are so vital in terms of trying to educate and trying to give as much information as possible as we ready to open up our doors. Because at the end of the day, this is really what it's all about. And here's the things Gene, we're going to go through today. We're going to talk about shelter in place announcements. I mean, from the time that, you know, I did that webinar on Wednesday, things have changed. And it's been 24 hours. It's pretty incredible. And then we're going to talk about how to bring back the team. We're going to spend a lot of time here because I know that this is something that you're very passionate about and you care about for your clients and others as they're getting ready for that next step. And then finally, how do we manage the patient interaction and how do we communicate with them and all those things. And of course, you know, you're sort of the experts of systems and dialogue and what words to use and what words not to use. And I think that becomes such a big part of this final step, you know, as we start to prepare for our patients. So.

A lot of great material. So let's jump into it. The shelter in place kind of announcements that are happening everywhere has really started because of this thing that, you know, I'm sure you've heard about and I'm going to use here, which is called shelter in place fatigue, which is we're just tired of being home. We're just tired of waiting for our patients. We're tired of not being able to treat the emergencies. And maybe, you know, the other patients that we know are high risk, but we haven't seen yet. And there's a lot of reasons why many of us haven't gone into the office. And a lot of that is because it is pretty scary. I mean, the science behind COVID 19 is something that not a lot of people still fully understand and know. And you hear about things all the time. So as states open up, we're seeing some very interesting.

Relationships being formed. So states like California and Oregon and Washington are teaming up with Colorado and Nevada. New York is teaming up with neighboring states. Texas is doing sort of its own thing. But we know one thing, which is that they are all starting to coordinate their efforts very similarly. Very similarly. Now, as you all know, California was one of the very first states to do the shelter in place. The counties in the Bay Area started doing it, and then California as a state kind of jumped into it. New York was a little bit late to the party, but they ended up doing their part. And other states are kind of doing as much as they can. Washington is still suffering through a lot of it. But what we know is that what's happening is that we're starting to see this whole protocol of opening up become much more frequent in the states. And it really started with states like Oklahoma and in Texas or whatnot. We, you know, states like Georgia that were very sort of cavalier about it right off the bat and just opened up all services, you know, last week or whatnot was, was sort of one way of doing it. But states like Texas really set the groundwork because what they said it was, look, we're going to open up slowly, right? We're going to open up super slowly and we're going to open up by having these service providers open up and then we're going to see how they do and we're going to see if there's spikes and if there aren't, then we're going to start moving forward. And now what you're seeing, even in the past 24 hours, counties, for example, in Northern California have teamed up and they have said that their doors are going to open up. And now construction can happen and some outdoor activities are allowed. Kids in groups of 12 or less can get together. There's a lot of specifics. I'm just giving you some samples. And so now the governor here in California hasn't necessarily opened it up. His phases are still there, which we're going to talk about. But what it's showing is this real inclination to want to open up. Okay. And so let's talk about California as sort of an example, because if you're in any of the, you know, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Colorado, you'll probably see something very similar to this. But very many other states like Texas and others are following very similar protocols. So since, you know, I think, Gene, you know, you and I talked about this earlier, since many people who are on this webinar may be in California, we're going to just use it as the example. But you can probably understand that this will apply across the board. So what the governor said earlier this week was basically that there's going to be four stages for opening up the office. So stage one, which is our kind of the current stage, is where essential businesses are allowed to operate, which includes, you know, but includes making sure that certain things are done, like face coverings by residents. And if you're going out in public, anything like that, you know, you still need those, those, those safeties in place. Stage two is where there's an opening of the lower risk workplaces. Right? Lower risk workplaces. So that means retail, curbside pickup, manufacturing, maybe of toys and other things, and some offices where you can't necessarily telework are going to be allowed to open up as well. And what he said Next is really important because he said this is going to happen over the next several weeks, not months. So by that we assume that stage two is going to happen sometime in May, and we don't know when or how, but sometime in May, then he starts talking about Stage three. Now, Stage three includes higher risk workplaces, so personal grooming, nail salons, entertainment, you know, things of that nature, sporting events without, you know, without fans. And he said stage three is months away, not weeks away, months away. Then there's Stage four, and that's the highest risks. Concerts, stadiums, conventions, you know, those kinds of things. And who knows what that is. If Stage three is months away, you know, who knows what stage four will be? But the question that I'm sure you're thinking is, well, where does dentistry fall? Does dentistry fall in Stage two? Does this fall in Stage three as high risk? Now, if you, if you follow all the social media stuff and you listen to.

All the risk criteria that they put, you would imagine that stage three is probably the proper place for dentistry or at least for maybe places like hygienists or whatnot, who knows? What we know right now is after having communicated with some folks at the governor's office earlier this week, that they are going to put out some report soon about this. Now, where and how and what dentistry fall, we don't know until we hear back from them. And they're going to give examples and things of that nature. My impression is that they're going to probably have dentistry open maybe a little bit in however they define that, and then maybe not, you know, open it up fully to hygiene or whatnot until later. But that's just my guess. I have, I don't know. But what we know is that at least the door is cracking open, right? The doors are cracking open to being to operate fully. Now, late last night, several counties, I think all the counties in the Bay Area issued notices that they were going to allow things to open up. Some of the language is different county to county, so that's not terrific. But what we know is that there is further allowance of that and a lot of them say that dentistry is allowed to be open. So now we just have to wait for the governor as his plan is more restrictive. Now, the good news is that they're asking for feedback. They're asking for feedback from the residents of the state. So if you are in California, you're listening to this, if you go to that website, you can actually submit comments and make your viewpoint known to the governor's office about where you think dentistry should fall into. And this is open to all, you know, California residents, really. So, so you can do that. Now let's go into sort of the big topic, which is let's assume we are going to be open and let's assume that we are planning for that in the future. How and when do we bring our employees back? How do we do it safely, how do we do it intelligently where our risks are a lot lower? And really the foundation of all this is the new hire documents, right? So if you fall into the category where you've terminated your employees already, you've done it, you know, maybe a couple weeks ago or whenever it was, then you need to bring them back and you need them to absolutely sign all new hire forms and a new employment manual that's updated for 2020. This is that you have to treat them like they're just brand spanking new employees. And that's important, right? It makes sure that one, you're doing everything you need to do. But if you never have done these things before or you don't, you've never had them, this is your opportunity to just do it. Right? Right. This is the opportunity to let HR shine because it is such a big part of, of what's going on. And by doing, you know, getting your new hire forms, getting an updated employment manual set up, you are in much better shape and your risk profile is much, much smaller than if you don't. So make sure, make sure you look into HR for help for that. Now what the question is, what if I don't want to bring everybody back? Right? And I'm sure a lot of you are probably thinking this. It's, I don't want to bring everybody back. I want to bring some of my people back, but I don't necessarily want to bring everybody back. So how do I handle. And the question here really relies on sort of, how do you manage that conversation? How do you manage that conversation? And here's really kind of where.

The rubber meets the road because you've got to make some decisions regarding staffing. You got to make some decisions regarding whom to bring back. And the risk really comes down to this, the potential bias that comes with. Now, if you've ever heard me speak before or if you've heard of any HR lectures, at some point, someone has said to you, make sure you're very, very careful about how you terminate an employee. How you terminate somebody, you know, whether they're pregnant, older or disabled or any of those things can be really risky. Can be absolutely risky. So Being careful about that is vital. Well, now it's not bias in termination that we're worried about. We're really worried about potentially bias in rehiring, right when rehiring. And that is a vital part of this. Because if you generally hire an onboard, let's say a few employees at a time on a rolling basis, as patients come back and business kind of comes up, that that is a strategy a lot of you are thinking of doing. And I think that's fine. The question is, how do you rehire them? How do you reinterpret, reintegrate them without causing bias? And that can be done really easily as long as you have some sort of plan, some sort of mechanism or criteria that you're using for the rehiring. So let me give you an example. Let's say you decide to do it based on the number of years that someone has worked for you. So if their tenure with you, if you do it based on tenure, then you will rehire back. If you're going to do it in waves and systematically, you're going to rehire the folks that have been with you the longest first and then slowly hire everybody else as business ramps up. Now, business could ramp up in a few days. It could take a couple of weeks. We don't know. The impression we've gotten from all of our clients nationwide is that there is this pent up demand that they believe patients are wanting to come back and they are wanting to come back quickly. And if you think about, if you kind of think about all this stuff out there with regard to hair salons and nail salons and all those things that people are looking forward to getting back to, which are elective. It makes sense that they would also want to come back for their teeth and want to look good and make sure that they're back on some sort of plan. And so the question then is, all right, maybe we base it on tenure, but what if you don't want to base it on tenure? Well, you could also base it on just work performance. And there you're going to have sort of an A team and a B team, which basically means you got the A team is the team you're bringing back first.

And it could be for a number of reasons. It could be because, you know, they have more flexible schedules. It could be because they're better work performers. It could be because they're full time versus partner. It could be a number of things. But what you do is you create a criteria, you bring the A team back with the understanding that The B team is going to sort of come in as well, you know, as, again, business, business grows. So, you know, this, you know, balancing fairness towards all employees, I think is very important here. And making sure that there's transparency and that there's some sort of rational basis for the hiring decisions will absolutely guard you against any claims that could be brought by anyone with regard to your hiring protocols. Okay? So very important now, once you know who you're going to bring back, what should you do? And communication is at the center of all of this, right? Communication is at the center of all of this. And so what's really, really vital is that you make sure that you've got all the information you need to bring them back. So one, obviously, is the new hiring documents that we were talking about. Two is to talk to them about training protocols, which we'll go through in a bit. You're probably going to want to do some training with them before the first day. And Gene is great about teaching you what words to use and what words not to use when you're bringing back team members, and also, more importantly, what you're teaching team members to say to patients when they're bringing them back, right? When they're calling to remind them about their appointments, when they walk through the door, how do you want to communicate with them? And that is sort of a vital part of the training because, remember, right, this is a scary time for everybody. And as much as we want to test our patients, as much as we, you know, want to protect ourselves and our teams or whatnot, I guarantee you the patients are going to want the same thing. They're going to want to know where you've been and what you've done and that you're taking protocols in place to protect them. And so that's a big part of this conversation. And so. So being able to train your team members is really, really, really important. So now let's talk about some basic items in terms of what to do, in terms of preparing. This is something that sometimes we take for granted. But you want to make sure that, you know, you're ensuring that the clinical staff has the right knowledge in terms of how to put on, how to take off and use the PPE that, that you're going to be giving them. Now, you might assume that they know, but this is a new world, right? This is an absolutely new world. We've never faced something like this to this degree. You know, people will say, you know, there's. There's been HIV and aids and, you know, and there was something in the, you know, in the 60s and there's something in the 1918 and all this stuff. And yes, all that is true, but for our modern society, this is, this is the first time we're facing it. And so a lot of your employees are facing this for the first time. And so the question is, how do you take on a glove safely? How do you take off your gown safely? So teaching them how to do that is an important part of this sort of step in terms of when you know who you're going to bring back. So keep that in mind. And also, you're going to probably do this a day or two before you open up to patients. And remember, those are paid days, so don't not pay them for that. And if you've gotten your PPE funds, this is a good time to use it. The next thing is really recognizing the symptoms of COVID 19. Now, the easy ones are fever, the cough, the shortness of breath. But the CDC has put out much, much more than just those three in terms of symptoms of COVID 19. And so that's important for your team to now be knowledgeable about and know so that they can identify it in each other. They can also identify it with patients. And remember, these have really huge, huge impacts to you in your office. Because if, let's say an employee gets COVID 19, it's a very real possibility because the CDC guidelines are still out there, that the not only does that employee, but everybody that that employee has been in touch with at the office and patients would have to be quarantined for the 14 days. And if that's the case, guess what? You're not opening up for business. I mean, or if you did open up, you're going to have to close again to make sure everyone's healthy and well. So there's a lot of reasons to kind of recognize these symptoms and to take action quickly, make sure you're implementing some procedures and strategies to quickly triage and separate sick patients. And so if a patient comes in and their Temperature is above 100.4, what are you going to do with that patient? Right? Are you going to, you know, are you going to put them into an operatory very quickly and have them there? And maybe that's the quote, unquote sick operatory. Are you going to send them home and deny them to come into the office? You got to have a plan for that. And you know, working with your team of advisors and gene on that will be really, really important.

Emphasizing hand hygiene and cough etiquette for everyone. Again, seems like everyone would be doing that by now. But it's really, really important to have this conversation. You know, asking staff to stay home if they're sick, even if they think they just have the flu, you know, may be a good idea to have them stay home because those symptoms are very similar, and immediately sending the employee home if they have symptoms that they develop at work. Okay, if they develop at work. Now, what happens if you force your employees to come back too soon? Okay. Now, instead of requiring them to come back the minute business opens again, it might be interesting and wise for you to give them the choice to stay home and maybe have that discussion with them. Now, it seems you might be thinking, ali, I need to be open. I need my entire team. And I understand that. But what we're seeing nationwide is that there's a lot of people that are very nervous. Now, if you look at what's happening in Georgia, Tennessee, you know, some other states, you will see that there is a lot of interesting things happening where hygienists are going to the dental board, basically saying, do not require. Please don't force us to go back to the office. You know, things of that nature. And so you need to be aware of this, because this is a real, real risk. And to mitigate your risk as the employer, what's important is that you make sure you've got all the proper protocols right, all the proper PPEs that you can have to protect them. You know, obviously, the masks, maybe air purifiers, maybe other things that are going to be recommended. I was hoping that by the end of April, we would hear from OSHA about specific guidelines. They were supposed to announce that a few days ago. They still haven't. So we're still kind of up in the air. But the things that you can do now, you know, we'll talk about in a little bit. But there are things you can do to protect them. You know, get your hands on as many, you know, N95 masks or whatnot as you think you need. You know, obviously, if you are wearing scrubs and whatnot, you can wear gowns, you know, you know, disposable gowns on top of it or on your. On your. On your N95 masks. So, you know, those are kind of strategies. But my point about this is you want to have a conversation with your team because not everyone may want to come back. And better to have those conversations now instead of forcing them to come in and then you not being ready to. Without the right protocols, without the right. PPEs.

So that then they feel unsafe and then that's when potential claims could arise.

So short changing workplace safety, just kind of keep that in mind. Again, we know it's going to be expensive to make some of these changes. It's not, you know, there's a lot of things that we think are going to be coming down the pipe. Again, we don't know for sure, but there's been talk of, you know.

Requiring space between the operatories. So if you're in an open bay kind of environment. And so, you know, thinking about that, you know, putting, you know, Plexiglas in different areas, you know, definitely you want to do things like putting plexiglass on, you know, the way on the front reception and those kinds of things. And tap plastics, by the way, is a great, great resource for that nationwide. You know, I, we use that with my wife's office and ordered them and you know, they were fantastic. And so just kind of keep that in mind because remember, it's not just you, right. All retail businesses, and I know you're not retail, but all retail businesses, medical offices, all of that. Right. Needs these protections now. And since we've moved away from those old bad looking, you know, medical designs where it was like a little box window, you remember that, Gene, you know, and so we've moved away from those thankfully and now it's much more open design. But so, you know, that being said, we now need some of these protections in place. And just, you know, keep that in mind with KYOP Plastics that they might, you know, they might end up running out or it might be harder to get. But the reason I bring these up is because I'm worried for you with regard to litigation because there are lawyers out there who are actively going after, you know, your employees, advertising to them and whatnot to get them to connect with them on things like unlawful terminations and those things. And so if you're short of meeting your obligations, you may end up kind of causing issues for yourself. I have heard from some of you that, you know, you're not necessarily worried about this because you got workers comp insurance. Of course, we all have workers comp insurance. But I want you to know something very specific. Workers comp covers you if your employees get the coronavirus in the office. But if it's determined that you are grossly negligent because you didn't take the most minor of approaches to getting compliant and putting in safety measures, then workers comp will not cover you in some instances. So don't always Rely on that. Make sure that you're doing the right thing from a safety perspective. So now, in terms of health screening, what's important to know here is that we are recommending that all employees get.

Get their temperatures taken before they enter into the office. So, you know, the doctor or office manager, someone should be taking their temperature and then recording that in their file. Now, if you are an HR for Health customer already, great. You know, it's easy for you. You can just put it into the system and it will be recorded there without any issues. If you are not an HR for Health customer, you have to do it the old fashioned way, which is you have to write it down and you got to store it and you got to make sure it's stored separately from everything else, the employment file that you have. So it has to be its own medical file under lock and key. So you have to take these steps because there are serious privacy and confidentiality issues that are there. Now, the good news is that the Department of Labor has allows you to ask questions and give them questionnaires or whatnot. The employees, about their condition, you know, have they ever had a cough? Have they ever, you know, not ever, but have they recently had a cough? What's their temperature? Are they taking care of someone who's sick? You can ask those questions now. You couldn't ask it before COVID 19 really, but now you can, because they are trying to make sure that you don't, you know, that you don't bring in sick employees into an environment where it can spread very easily. And so the CDC and OSHA have made that clear and the Department of Labor has supported them, which is great. Which is great. Now, in terms of work arrangements, we are all trying to figure out the proper work arrangements for our teams. You are kind of left scrambling a little bit to figure out how the social distancing mandate, you know, apply to the local mandates and how do you counter that against, you know, the physical, you know, work site kind of changes that you do and more importantly, the safety concerns that I was just mentioning. So here, you know, not knowing really what the final kind of what the right answers are and what the final recommendations of OSHA and the states are going to be. You know, what we're saying is that is, you may have to kind of do a slow rollout in terms of how many patients you see until you kind of get comfortable with it. And so a lot of people are doing a couple strategies, and Jean's kind of the expert in this. So I'm going To defer to her, to kind of talk to you in more detail about it.

Based on your decisions. But we have people doing A and B teams, right? A's coming, you know, come first and then, and then throughout the day, kind of B employees come in with the idea of kind of not having everyone there at the same time. An offshoot of that to see the number of patients you need to see. People are splitting their days. People are splitting their day. So they're doing, they're doing 10, 12 hour days and they're having one team get in at 7 to, you know, whatever one, and then the second team is going from some other, you know, 12:31 to, you know, 7 o' clock at night or whatever the hours are. You have to, there's actually a science behind it, so you have to kind of look over that. There is some overlap there, but the idea is that you have more coverage in terms of the day and you're able to see more patients in that 12 hour, 10 hour day than you know, than you would otherwise. Because, you know, if we take into account social distancing and everything else, you may not see the same number of patients that you're used to seeing in a normal eight hour day. Again, just one thing to keep in mind in terms of a strategy, make sure you talk to Gene about it and kind of look at your schedule and kind of plan out because there's a lot of hiccups there, right? The overtime could be a potential problem. The number of employees you have could be a problem. I mean, you may not have enough for two whole groups of employees working every day or four days a week. So just kind of give that some, give that some thought. Now, some frequent questions that we get. One is what do I do if I receive my PPP loan, but I'm not ready to open yet? That is an absolute fair question. If you are one of the lucky few who's gotten the PPP loan, what my recommendations are at this point is that, is that you spend the money on your rent, on your utilities, on things that you have to pay, okay? But don't spend it on anything else until the second half of the eight weeks so that we can see what happens with regard to, you know, the new rules. And if the SBA comes down and gives more direction, then, you know, you might be better off. Now if you are going to open up, you can use that money for sure and pay your employees or whatnot. But remember, anything you pay to your employees, that's not forgiven for any number of reasons. Anything that's not forgiven, then you will have to pay that back to the bank as part of the loan and you're not going to get reimbursed from your employees. And so if you do anything of that nature, just kind of keep those things in mind. That's why we're saying just hold on to it until we're sure that you're opening up. That way you can really, truly use it for payroll. Now, on our resources page on HR4Health, for those of you who got the loan, we have a calculator that we created. Really kind of simple. Simply, it kind of walks you through everything. We try to make it as easy as possible. You put in the number of employees and everything. You may want to look at that if you haven't already, use it as a guide. But really you should be talking to your CPA in detail about it because they truly are going to be the one who are going to make sure that the maximum amount that you have gotten is going to get forgiven.

Can I pay employees in advance to give them a large bonus or as a way to use the funds in the eight week time frame? So yes, you can give people advances, you can give them bonuses through, you know, through payroll, as long as wages, you should be okay. But remember, if for any reason you don't hit the other metrics and a portion of it is not forgiven, then you will owe that money to the bank and you're not going to get it back from the employees. So just kind of keep that in mind if, you know, if cash flow is an issue. What I can tell you is that not all the notes, you know, the promissory notes from the banks are the same. There are differences amongst them. So keep an eye on that. Because some of their rules are sometimes a little bit more restrictive than other banks or the SBA guidelines. And you might say, well, why is a bank doing something different than the sba? Well, they're just trying to protect their investment, we think, or whatnot. And, and so they're being more restrictive. So some banks have language that says.

You can't fire anybody until December 31st. Some say that you've got to keep 90%.

Of the employees from before, even though the federal government's numbers are a little bit less. So there are specific changes to it. We have one bank we saw that said that you can't reduce the salary of any employee even a dollar until September 30th. So, you know, they've got all these little rules and if you don't do it perfectly, you know, then they could, you know, not forgive some or all of your loan. So just kind of keep that in mind. Work with your cpa. If you want us to look at your contracts, we can too, but your CPA could, could help as well.

How do I skim my employees to make sure they're healthy when coming to work? So questionnaire is a great thing to send to them to answer whether they've been in contact with anybody with COVID.

Are they taking care of anybody with COVID Have they been diagnosed themselves? Do they have any of the symptoms, any of those things? I'm going to give you a resource at the end with some of these questions for you so you can get those done. But that's kind of stage one. Stage two is to really take their temperature before they walk in. Keep a close eye on them, make sure they know that their job is safe, even if they do get sick, so that they communicate with you honestly and truly as this kind of progresses. Okay, if your employees are working from home, that's great. Make sure that they are getting paid for that.

There's been some talk about the HIPAA rules being kind of more lackadaisical during COVID 19. And I want to clarify that because HIPAA has said that they are relaxing the enforcement of some of their rules regarding the disclosure of private patient information. But they really meant more in like, zoom calls and those kinds of communications by fax or email. They didn't mean that your employee could be at home with patient files on the kitchen counter where Social Security numbers and other private information is kind of out in the open or not under lock and key. So just be careful of that. You want to make sure you have your employees sign a work from home agreement so they know what their obligations are when they are home.

And things of that nature, things that we can prepare for you if, if you want them. But the reality is that you want to educate them on the HIPAA stuff. But if they want to communicate with you or patients via zoom or email or whatnot, then there's been some more relaxation of those rules. They don't have to be as arduous as they were when you were in the office.

Now, one question I know Gina's gotten a lot, I've gotten a lot, is what do I do if my employees are fearful or refuse to come to work? What if they don't want to come back until shelter in place is lifted? So here.

This is a common thing, and I get it. And we're Going to talk about unemployment in a second. But if they're fearful of COVID 19, I understand it. We're all fearful of it. That's one of the reasons we're home. You know, some of us feel better now than we did, you know, three, four weeks ago, but it is still a threat.

But now, you know, as we're sort of opening up our doors again, you know, some feel more comfortable than others. So the question, I think, comes down to, you know, how do you communicate with your employees in these fashions? And fear, I think, to me, is very reasonable under the circumstances. We don't want to downplay that for anybody. You never know what people's home situations are like. They may be taking care of an elderly parent, they may be doing other things, but I think communication with them is going to be key. Tell them what you're doing in terms of ppe. Tell them what you've done in terms of sterilization, in terms of air purifiers, the N95 mask. Tell them all the things you're doing to protect them as an employee. That should help with the conversations, and it should allay their fears. And if it does, maybe they will then decide that it's the right time to come back. I think a lot of people are relying on the ADA and the CDA and their recommendations. So we just have to, you know, you may have to wait for that until they make their decisions and say that it's safer to come back, but that, you know, the fear is reasonable. I think it's just more of a having a conversation with them. The good news is that, you know, as a society, we've all overcome things like this many, many times. You know, we do think patients are going to come back. We just have to protect ourselves in the meantime. Now, an offshoot of that question is, what if they don't want to come back because they make more unemployment? And that is an absolute fact. Right now, some employees are getting about $1,000 a week, which may end up being more or almost more than what they're making in the office. And here I want to divide my response into two things. One is.

If you're open for business and you have work available and the employee refuses to come in, then you could technically terminate them because they have refused to come to work because of unemployment and their work is available. The reality is they may lose their unemployment because you have to notify the state that they refuse to come to work. And so they may even lose their unemployment at that point. And a Lot of employees don't realize that, but I'm not advocating termination because it's hard to find great team members. It's hard to bring back people who know your office well as you're kind of getting ready to ramp up. So the second part of my answer is, start working with them, communicate with them. Make it clear to them that if you're open for business, you have to notify the state. If you notify the state, they may lose their unemployment. And so then suddenly it's not so good being at home. I think some people may use unemployment as a reason, but there may be other real factors that is preventing them from coming back to work. So there's communication, again, helps with that. Now, the reality is that as a leader of your practice, as a leader that they are looking up to, to help kind of navigate through this. I think you have to also decide how valuable are some of these employees who may not be wanting to come back, because if they're a great team member, then you can show true leadership by keeping them, but not necessarily forcing them to come in, finding a replacement, what? Not for the time being, temporary or otherwise, until they are ready to come in. But the leadership side of this is huge. It's huge. It's huge. And please work with Gene on that because you can really make yourself shine as a leader in this space. Right now, your team and your employees are counting on you to be their leader. How do I document employees temperature? We talked about that. You put it in a file again. Of course, if you're HR for health, it's a lot.

Easier to do it electronically and secure. But if not, you got to do it in paper under lock and key. Can I delay the start date of someone who is pregnant or older than 65? So I've gotten a lot of questions about this. I think, Gene, you have too, which is I'm worried about my team got an elderly team member. I've got a pregnant team member. I've got someone with HIV or aids. I have someone with asthma. I have immunocompromised employees. What do I do? What do I do? And the Department of Labor has said you unfortunately cannot delay their start date because of their condition. It sounds crazy to me as well, because they are the most risky group out there. But the Department of Labor is. You can't discriminate against them. You can't delay their start date. If they wish to come back, then they need to come back. Just make sure you've got all the right PPEs in place that's really what we're hearing now. My thought is that again it goes back to communication, have that conversation with them, say, look, what are your plans? Here's when we're planning on opening up, what would you like to do? And I think what you'll find is that some people will want to come back and then you're going to have to have a follow up conversation about making sure that they're safe, you know, if they fit into this special category. And some people I think you'll find that won't want to come back. Right. And they'll want to delay it a little bit because they're worried. I've gotten in the last four days, probably 30 older dentists who are saying I don't want to come back, I want to sell my practice, find me a buyer or you know, introduce me to a broker or do anything like that. I want to sell my practice. I'm not stepping back into that. Can you blame them? No, I can't blame them, right? I can't blame them. I'm sure hygienists are thinking the same thing, you know, so if you're older, you're immunocompromised, I get it, I get it. But you cannot start there. You cannot delay their start date just because of their condition. But I think again, show your leadership, step up to the plate, have a conversation with them and I think you'll find that it'll work itself out. Now let's talk about, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's talk about how to manage the patient interactions. So here are some must haves that everyone should be thinking about almost immediately. Right? So one is front desk barriers with plexiglass or something similar. Again I mentioned tap plastics earlier.

We have found that to be a good resource. They're nationwide, but there are, I'm sure, other vendors as well. I know nothing about their pricing or whatnot, but that's a good thing. You definitely want to have that. If you have an open bay, you may want to put it in between the chairs. Got to think about that. Hand sanitizers, we are recommending it as you know, based on what we've researched with the CDC and others. You want to have it outside your front door on the way in. You want to have it inside your front door so patients can use it on their way out, maybe on each operatory in just general areas in the office so that it is available now. Hand sanitizers are like gold right now. You know, good luck finding one. But you need to have it. You need to have it. So you need to have a strategy for that moving forward because it's a basic part of the PPE guidelines. Working thermometers have a couple handy just in case one doesn't work or malfunctions. You want to take the temperature of everyone in the office. The other thing is pens. You know, if you are doing things electronically, this isn't as big of an issue, but having a pen where people are signing stuff and writing checks, you may want to order some disposable pens or whatnot, or recommend your patients bring their own pens. Bring your own wine and bring your own pens. Why not.

Do something like that? I wouldn't put pens in a big box so that somebody puts their hands in, touches 50 of them, but takes out one, that kind of defeats the purpose. So, but think about that. For those of you that are doing things in paper still, I would contact your insurance carrier about maybe six month recall waivers. One of the large dental associations is recommending this to their doctors. I thought it was a great idea. You may be able to get your patients in sooner than what's typically allowed, which would be great. Absolutely. I haven't heard people talk about this very much and I'm a little bit surprised, but you may want to schedule special hours for special needs patients and also older patients, kind of like Costco's and the other large grocery stores are doing around the country.

This is important, I think, for two reasons. One is obviously for the safety of everyone, but also from a kind of almost like a marketing purpose. I mean, older patients may just not want to come in unless they feel more secure. I can tell you that just as an example, my own mother and my wife's parents, they wouldn't go to Costco until Costco had their special hours. And then suddenly they're there like every morning. And so just kind of think through that. Because.

That mindset translates to you as a provider, right? Because it makes sense, right. If, if they're going to, if they're going to, if they want nail salons and they want haircuts and they want, you know, manicures and pedicures and all that stuff, that's great. That means that there's demand for looking good, right? Well, guess what? There's a lot of elective stuff that you provide that they want as well to look good. The counter to that is that if the mindset is, hey, I don't want to go to a store where there are there. There's not my Kind of people, right? The people who are 65 or above or pregnant or immunocompromised. They may translate that to you and your practice. And so, again, I don't know human behavior, but I can tell you these are things to think about. So special hours, I think, might help.

The toolkit from the ada, I think, is a great, great resource for all of you. If you haven't downloaded it, go ahead and download it. The ADA was a little slow to act, but then when they started to act, they did a really great job. And this toolkit that they created is fantastic. It's got sample letters, it's got advice, it's got some information about the masks. I mean, it's got some really, really great stuff. And so I think you should download it. It's a really great thing to have in your back pocket. So, final thoughts to kind of just summarize everything. HR for Health, please. If you don't have your HR house in order, you have some time on your hands right now. Get it done, get it done well, and that way you can just put it on the back burner, your employees will appreciate it and then your risk will fall greatly as you plan to reopen. So get your documents, get your manual, focus on your systems. Absolutely. Focus on your system. This is the time to get your systems right. And, you know, it's funny, when Jean and I first met, one of the first conversations I had with her, you know, years ago, 15, 20 years ago, whatever it was, I was mentioning to her that, you know, I want my clients to have systems because the systems are what keep them operational, you know, A to Z. And she was like, I love systems. That's all I do is systems. And so focus on your systems. If there's an area of your practice that you just don't feel comfortable with or you think you could do better, or you feel like, oh, my gosh, my hygiene recall isn't as good as it is. This is the time. Get it done, get it fixed now.

And those systems operationally will help you be much more efficient when you hit the ground running and open up. If you get any demand letters from attorneys, they're happening a lot, a lot right now, send it to us. We will respond on your behalf and make sure we quiet them down. We've gotten a lot of them already and it's only been seven weeks or whatnot that we've been closed in terms of shelter in places, in some places around the country. So they're out there. Be careful. Another reason why HR for health is vital. If you have any loans that are 4%.

Four and a half or more, this is the time to refinance them. Talk to Jean. She's got some amazing resources. I'm happy to give you some names as well. They are incredible, incredible deals out there right now. And so if you're in a cash crunch, one, you can get loan advances, which is wonderful. You can get some cash up front for expenses and whatnot, but then you can refinance it and free up some of your cash flow to spend on some of these expenses that are coming up now. Although it makes me sad to even have this on the slide, I know a lot of you are thinking about retiring. You're thinking about just not opening up again. I get it. I know it's a very hard and personal decision. Reach out to Gene, reach out to me. Let us know if you're in that mindset. There are a lot of great, wonderful buyers out there who want practices because they're trying to set themselves up for the next 10, 20 years so we can hook you up with a buyer. And hopefully, if you are a young doctor listening to this, you are still getting empowered. You know that we're going to overcome this. And you know, it's a great time to do a startup or an acquisition because, you know, by the time we uncover, we are expecting things to hopefully get back to normal. So.

If you want. It's not a resource for N95 Mask, but if you want to get access to our startup checklist, if you text the word Coronavirus to 44222, you will get a resource for all of the great, all of the great steps that we just talked about in sort of one document. If you guys want to chat with me, there's my phone number at the office and my assistant's email. So feel free to reach out and she'll set up a time for us. So, Jean, what are you thinking?

Thank you. We've got quite a few questions in the queue, if you don't mind.

No, not at all.

Great job. Fantastic. As I knew you would.

Thank you.

Yeah, for sure. So one of the questions is, do you need to do a new rehiring docs even if your employees are only furloughed?

No, Great question. If your employees are furloughed, you do not need to rehire them because you haven't terminated them. So the good news is that you don't need all the new hiring docs now. If you don't have the hiring docs, you don't have all. You know, depending on the state you you're in, it could be 12 or 17 documents on average. So if you don't have them, this is a good time to actually get them so that you're set up moving forward. But if you have them, you don't need to do it.

Okay. And just to give you a little lowdown here, we have people from Virginia, California, Oregon, New York, Illinois, and South Carolina.

Awesome. Yeah.

So next question is.

What do I have to see for my independent contractor associate dentist who has a corporation, if I cannot bring him back all days or I cannot bring him back for one or two more months, what criteria should he be needing?

Yeah, great question. So if you are working with independent contractors, you have to look at your contract with them. The contract will spell out kind of everyone's roles and responsibilities, and that is what you should use in terms of determining what your obligations are to bring them back. When you open up again, you may have to bring them back at their old rates or old hours. You may be able to change it. So most folks that we've been talking to have been very understanding and have wanted to kind of come back to where they were working and slowly ramp up. But from a legal perspective, I would focus on the contract. From a personal perspective, I would just communicate with them and see what their plans are.

Okay. And a little follow up to that one from someone else. What about employees who were laid off that would be considered terminated. So rehire paperwork would be necessary, correct?

Yes, absolutely. If they've been laid off, it's the same as termination. You absolutely need to get them the new hire forms, and HR for Health can provide all that.

And Ali, can you be so kind to just go back one slide? Someone did not capture what you said in regard to the text. He said that if you text him the coronavirus to 44222, they will send you a resource for the N95 mask, correct?

No, not the N95 mask. That's a typo. It's really a resource for hiring and bringing everyone back on.

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome.

And then the next question is, what is the wage threshold that won't.

Detrimentally affect my staff's unemployment? They are taking CE webinars and I want to pay them for the time spent. Should I pay them through payroll or just a company check with CE on the memo line?

Yeah, great. Great question. So what's funny about this is that you would think that the answer is pretty straightforward, but we have seen Things across the country be very, very different where, you know, somebody working even, you know, you know, five hours or eight hours has caused them to lose their unemployment. You know, we've seen some people work 20 hours and their unemployment was simply cut down, which is kind of what should be happening.

But in some situations, they've been cut. We've had people work almost.

Even more than that under the table, if you will. What I will tell you is I don't recommend that you do anything under the table. Don't give cash to anybody. Don't do any of that stuff, because their time working will be recorded, but your payments won't necessarily have proof. And so if you want to give them a company check and write CE on the memo line, that could be okay. It's still wages to them. So you may have to report it. I mean, you definitely have to report it. So I would work with your CPA on that. But the best thing to do is just to run it through wages, through payroll.

Okay, great. And then what is the protocol for the office if a patient calls and lets us know that they've been tested positive after visiting our office?

Yes, yes. And this applies, by the way, to not just patients, but this applies to all vendors. You know, it could be your supply vendor. It could be your, you know, water guy. Could be. It could be, you know, your nitrous person. It could be anybody. In those situations, you would have to notify all of the patients and employees who were in contact with the office that day, notify them that, you know, that somebody was in the office and has been tested positive. And, you know, based on your location, you probably will have to just follow the CDC guidelines, which is to be quarantined for 14 days. You know, pretty harsh. That may change, you know, but as of right now, I don't believe it has.

Okay, this is a good one. What if you had an employee who was collecting disability through the state prior to Covid crisis? The employee was mediocre at best with performance prior to. And now they're calling you and saying, hey, I'm ready to come back to work. And, you know, there's his response. He's saying was that unfortunately, everyone was being laid off until further notice. What obligations does he have to rehire that person at all?

So that goes to. I mean, that goes to the question we had earlier about bias. Right? You have to just be careful about who you hire and who you not hire back. And so that's that, you know, in your situation, that's a very tricky One what I would probably say is give me a call and let's, let's talk through it because you'll have some options there. But I want to make sure you don't make a mistake in rehiring or not hiring and then, and then get sued.

Okay, next one is, is there a consent form for employees to document that they were given the choice to return to work?

Yes. So we have a consent form on our HR for Health Resources page. I will tell you, it's really more of a feel good document. And what I mean by that is that, is that it may not have any real legal impact or effect, but it is a document where you're spelling. We kind of wrote it out so that you're spelling out the potential risks and the fact that they're ready to come back. The reality is that if, God forbid, they get sick while in the office, if you've done all the other things that we were talking about in terms of ppe, they will be able to file for workers comp and you'll be covered.

If a patient gets it, then other insurances that you have will kick in. But there is that on our resources page.

Okay. A dental assistant told me that she cannot return to full time because she does not have childcare for her elementary age child due to the COVID 19 school closure. I told her that I cannot offer her part time, three days employment and could only reinstate her after furlough into full time employment. What is your opinion about that?

So there's a couple of things there. It depends on if you've terminated them or you have furloughed them. That's kind of the first step in that analysis. You know, child care is, you know, is a protected leave right now under Covid. I think if you, you know, if you, if she's got, if you terminate her and she has childcare issues now and cannot come back to work, then you're sort of off the hook because you know you've already terminated her, you're not bringing her back. But if you like this employee, I would tell her, when you're ready, let me know and if I have a position for you, you can come back. If you've only furloughed them, then they're technically still employed with you. So they could use, you know, emergency sick leave or emergency FMLE for coverage during this time that they, that they're out of your office.

So Ali, just to follow up to that, if the employee chose to use fmle, and that is a. My understanding is that is a 12 week payment and that pay comes from the employer or the state?

It comes from the employer. Yeah, so. And I see that Catherine also replied below that they were furloughed. So, so then, so yeah, so that, that, that fee that you're talking about is paid by, by you as the employer. So the way it works is that the first two weeks, the first two weeks are emergency sick leave and then the next 10 weeks are the emergency fmle. And the reason is that the emergency family leave.

The 12 weeks.

Are available, the first two weeks are unpaid and then the 10 weeks are paid, if that makes sense.

So just to recap, for clarity, the first two, the employee has to state that that's what they are going. That's what they want to take.

Yes.

Okay. And then in addition, the first two weeks, that would just be emergency sick leave. And the next 10 weeks the employer would be responsible to pay the next 10 or 12.

That's exactly right. No, all the 10. And it's 2/3. It's 2/3 their pay, Gene. So it's not the entire thing. And remember, I know that sounds really bad, that sounds really bad. But you get a tax credit for that money that you spend. So the good news is, is that, that.

You'Ll get it back in terms of quarterly tax credits on your payroll. So you're not really losing anything.

Okay, next question is from Kim in reopening, can we only start a few employees back and then keep others on furlough until we have enough patients to employ all the employees? And I think the answer that you gave earlier was yes. Is that correct?

Absolutely. Yep.

Okay, thanks, Kim. And then Sanaz, any policies to bring back staff with age over 60 or medical conditions such as asthma, pregnancy or immune deficiencies?

Nothing. Nothing different. Nothing different than what the CDC has recommended, you know, and OSHA has recommended for PPEs for everybody. I think you have to be a little bit more careful, you know, in terms of, you know, CO2 and those kind of things. If they're wearing their masks because they are older and more susceptible to that potentially, but, you know, nothing specific for folks in that category.

I think one of the things that I have recommended to clients, and I think you alluded to this earlier, Ali, and I think for those special, not employees, but patients offering that special time that they could come in or that special hour of the day or particular day of the week for people that are suffering from Asthma or above 60 years old or what have you is reassuring and might go a long way, I think.

Yeah.

Okay. Next question is from Rosalynn. EDD is not having anyone certified benefits anymore until week of May 9th. If employees are helping with emergencies, how do they let the EDD know?

I would. Right now, what I would say is just, you know, wait until the EDD communicates with you asking for information. So they are. Right now, everyone in their offices are more or less working from home as well, and it's very difficult to get a hold of them. But what I would say is once they communicate with you in letter or whatnot, then use that opportunity to respond to them.

Got it. Next one is from Rachel, and her question is, what if an employee asks to delay start due to health issues? Is that okay? How do we deal with that? I think you answered that, but let's go ahead and give it a quick shot.

Yeah, yeah. If it's a health issue. If it's a health issue, you have to treat it kind of like any other disability. What I would do is have them, depending on what it is, to get a doctor's note indicating that they work and when they believe they will be allowed to kind of come back to work. Some of the rules have been a little bit more lax because of COVID 19, so you can ask a little bit more info, but the thought is.

If it's a health issue regarding Covid or whatnot, then you can ask a little bit more about that. If it's not, then you have to treat it like any other disability and not ask questions.

Okay, I have an employee that is 29 weeks pregnant and a hygienist who is over 65. What if they choose not to come back when I open up, do they still receive unemployment? Should I do this? What should I do if that happens?

So, I mean, if they don't come back and you're open for business, then they would technically lose their unemployment. But again, because of the way unemployment is working right now, you know, it's not a guarantee, but it is. You know, the employee who's pregnant can probably get disability insurance, you know, for.

Her pregnancy time. For the older employee, it will be a lot more difficult. I mean, in terms of what to do. I mean. Gene, what do you think about that? I mean, I would say find replacements.

But, you know, yeah, I think I would try to find replacements. I have found dentists out there that, as a matter of fact, many are interviewing and getting great responses from recruiting right now. People are looking.

Yeah, people are looking.

Yeah, people are looking. And I think for various different reasons, as we kind of discussed throughout the presentation, another Question is, can we open for business? But inform staff hours will be reduced. Depending on the staff schedule, working hours will vary on a daily basis. I would, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So you can do that. That's legal. You can just say, I'm opening on reduced hours. And like Ali had said, bring back your A team or your B team or a variation of both, and just say, this is what we're doing now. Now, that doesn't ensure that they're going to stick and wait at home. If they need full time and you're only offering part time, they may apply to another office and you may lose them. But that could be a risk that you're willing to take.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And, you know, and a big part of that, you know, a big part of that is that, you know, a big part of that too is that, you know, if you're notifying your team, you don't want to surprise them. You want to just say, hey, here's what we recommend, right? You know, we're going to open up, you know, three days a week for eight hours and then, and then hopefully, you know, open up the following week. You know, like this new schedule. And, and as long as you're communicating with them, it shouldn't be a problem.

And for those of you that are unclear as to how that schedule will look or what you're going to do next week, we're going to have, I'm going to be sponsoring a whole resource opening again we have in our series. And one of the days I'll be talking myself about the scheduling templates and what specifically to do. And I'm going to show you the templates of how it could actually work where you're not, you know, you're really practicing social distancing and whatnot. So hopefully that'll be helpful to you. Next question is from Katherine. What kind of new documentation should we have in employee files since COVID 19?

So there's a lot of recently updated stuff from the federal government with the i9 and whatnot, those kind of just basic documents. And then they have made some requirements for the employment manual for anti discrimination rules. And then we are recommending some updates to what happens in cases of emergency in terms of their employment or whatnot. So there's a whole host of little things that are now required that we're just sort of adding. So if you call HR for all, they'll talk to you about all of that.

Okay, so two questions on this, and that is people are Eager to hear what is the demand letters that you're getting from attorney.

Oh, sure, of course. So. So a demand letter is basically a letter from an attorney or someone else on behalf of one of your employees saying that they, you know, that you've done something wrong and they want some relief. Right. Whether it's money or something else. And right now, what we're seeing is a lot of unlawful terminations. We're seeing a lot of.

Discrimination in terms of rehiring because some states have already kind of gone back into action. We're seeing a lot of age discrimination stuff coming up because conversations are being had about who can come back and who not to come back. So Those are the COVID 19 types of letters that we've seen thus far. And then, of course, they tie in a lot of other things, like, you know, you didn't pay me correctly, you didn't do this, you didn't do that. They're just, you know, opportunistic in that sense.

Okay, next question you've answered. But he had a follow up to that. And this is from James. Ali did answer the question, if your employees are furloughed, can I bring them, you know, only back select employees? And the answer is yes. Follow up to that. He said, how do I know if my employees are furloughed? Furloughed or laid off? Our state, Michigan, gave state of emergency orders to shelter in place. Everyone in Michigan is pretty much is in hiding. So in other words, James, what I'm hearing you say is you didn't necessarily declare to your patients or your staff, hey, you're furloughed. Hey, you're laid off. It just happened. And you kind of close the doors and now you don't know what bucket they fall in. Is that. I think that's what he's saying.

Yeah. So, I mean, the decision between furloughed and laid off really depends on what you've done yourself. So if you haven't said anything to your employees, they're just at home, then you probably have just furloughed them because they're still employed by you. They're expecting to come back. But if you've laid them off or terminated them, you've told them, hey, I've got to let you off. Here's your final paychecks, here's all the things I have to give you. And, you know, when we reopen up again, I look forward to hopefully having you back. So you would know, between the two, if you, if you haven't done anything, then I would probably argue that you furloughed them.

Okay. And that that comment also just came through from Georgia who said we didn't, you know, we weren't given any direction either. So what I've just heard Ali saying, correct me if I'm wrong, Ali, is that if you don't have a delineation that you're aware of that you gave, then you likely furloughed them because you're expecting them to come back as an employee with your business.

Yes, exactly.

Okay, so next question is. And we're down to about eight, Ali, so bear with us.

You got it.

If we accrued sick hours before COVID 19 closures and get a new employee handbook during this downtime, will it be okay to change the terms of the sick pay mid year? I know this does not include FFCRA fmle.

Yes. So the answer is yes. You can change your benefits, whatever they are, including sick leave, as long as they match the minimum state or county rules. So you can, you know, if you're, if you're more generous with your sick leave than the state or county you know, asks you to be, then you can change it. You have to give ample notice and whatnot. And you do have to kind of figure out, you know, how to make sure that they get paid for what they've already earned. But the short answer is yes.

Okay, great. And then let's see here.

Five of our seven full time employees could claim that they can't return to work because they take care of kids under 18 years old. Are we obligated to comply by the FFCRA.

Where they don't have to come to work, question mark? We can't function with that small of a staff.

Yeah, yeah. So this person could potentially fall under the exemption, the ffcra, because five of their seven employees.

Are not able to come in. So you might be able to be exempt.

Okay.

There'S two questions here. One is what is the text for that text again? And the second, and I'm sorry I didn't write that down, I would have been able to answer it it privately. And the other is what is the web address for resources list page? I would like to print it out if possible. And I believe you're saying that that text would get them to that, correct?

Yeah, the text would get them to that resource on rehiring. I don't have the web address yet for the resources page with me, Jean, because I'm still on the, on the presentation screen. I don't know. Do you have that? Maybe we can Circulate that. If not Zoya, we can get it to you. Yep.

For sure. And then. So, Katherine, I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I did not terminate her. She chose to resign because she could not return to full time. Are there any repercussions for me?

Doesn't sound like it. Yeah, if she resigned herself, you're in pretty good shape. Okay.

Ffcra. Can we offer to some staff but not others? How do you decide?

No, no, no. It's not up to you.

Okay. Those 10 weeks that are being covered for family leave, we pay two thirds of the salary that we get the tax credit. But we do pay payroll taxes.

Yes. Ten weeks that you're covering for family, we pay two thirds that we get. Yes, yes.

And then, Kim, I missed the beginning due to the computer problem. To a computer problem. Will you email this to us to go back fully through it? I am recording this, Kim, and we'll be posting it on Jean St. Louis Consulting YouTube channel. So you're welcome to grab it off of there. Give us a few hours. It should be by the end of today. There was a question earlier about what will happen. You know, what about our previous seminars from this week? We did record them. They will be on the YouTube channel as well. And that should again be happening sometime today. We have one thing in the chat bar and. Let's see here.

Okay. I think it was just that Georgia comment. That same as Michigan. Okay. Well, we had a great time with you, Ali. We appreciate all the generosity of your time. I know your time is precious and greatly appreciative for what you did for us. Thank you.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you again, Jean. Good luck, everyone. Be safe.

Okay, you too. Take care.

Bye.