COVID-19 School Decisions | How Employers Can Accommodate Their Employees with Children
In this episode of the Monday Marketing Meeting, ERG CEO Matt Vaadi and Director of Marketing Karen discuss the emerging challenge for employers as K‑12 schools across the United States decide whether to operate in‑person or remotely for the upcoming fall term. They outline the anxiety parents feel about balancing child safety, education, and work responsibilities, and they propose a practical, empathy‑driven framework for employers. The framework emphasizes (1) early, transparent communication to identify which employees are impacted; (2) gathering individual circumstances and preferences; (3) offering flexible work‑hours, remote‑work options, and adjusted scheduling (e.g., early‑morning or extended‑day shifts); (4) ensuring employees have the necessary technology and clear remote‑work policies; (5) reviewing and adapting leave policies, including the federal FFCRA emergency paid FMLA provisions, as state school‑closure rules evolve; and (6) recognizing that supportive actions improve employee morale, productivity, and overall company culture. The hosts stress that these steps are simple but essential, urging employers to act with empathy rather than a rigid “get the work done” stance, and they point listeners to ERG’s website for ongoing updates.
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So what are you going to do with your employees that have kids that cannot or will not go back to school in the fall? That's the question we're addressing on this week's Monday Marketing Meeting. This Sunday night I was meeting with my Bible study group and everybody had the same prayer request at the end of the conversation, and that was, hey, pray for us to be able to make the right decision on what to do with our kids in the fall. Here in South Carolina, we have the option in our school district to either send our kids back to school full-time or to have them be learning remotely full-time, which will create obvious strains on employers as people tend— or as some people make that decision to teach their kids at home. So in this episode, we're going to share some ways that you can make sure that you're addressing this properly as an employer and some great ways to get ahead of the situation right now. Thanks and enjoy.
Hello.
So that's gonna be our topic this week, is talking about what do employers do in this circumstance, because obviously it's going to create a whole bunch of challenges. And Karen and I are going to talk through this today. Karen is the director of marketing at the ERG family of companies. Hey, Karen, how are you?
Good, how are you?
Doing awesome. My name is Matt Vadie. I'm CEO of ERG Payroll and HR. So, Karen, what are your thoughts on this topic? What are the challenges this is going to create for employers?
I think that this is a big— as we're coming up at the end of July, we're starting to hit that point that parents are, what do I do that's best for my children, for their safety, but also I need to still work, and how is my work going to accommodate this? Like you mentioned, South Carolina gives the option. Some states aren't even giving the option. For instance, Maryland has virtual learning for every child until January. So where do— I think the struggle comes with employers don't know what's going to happen. They're also uncomfortable. So employees are uncomfortable maybe asking, you know, it's only July, but schools that start at the end of August, beginning of September, You know, what am I going to do? I need to figure this out now. And some, you know, some parents have parents that can help, you know, grandparents with the kids, or, you know, they have other care that can help with this. But there's a lot of parents out there who don't. And it's becoming a big, you know, I don't know what to do. And I think this is the time where employers need to figure out a game plan. Of how they're going to treat this and communicate it quickly to ease that stress of what's going on with parents right now as these schools are making these decisions across the United States.
Yeah, it's going to create huge challenges for employers. I mean, owning a small business myself, having a lot of friends that own small businesses, clients that own small businesses, this is a high level of concern of, okay, hey, we've shifted to remote work, we like it, but we still know that XYZ employees are over here trying to watch their kids and trying to take care of their kids while they're home for the summer while they're getting work done. How is that actually happening during those hours? And, and so it's created some skepticism, it's created some challenges even already. And now we're entering into an era where this is going to become part of the new normal for the foreseeable future. And I hate that new normal as much as everybody else does, but this is where we're at right now. And so I think it's going to create a lot of challenges for employees and employers as they try to figure out how to navigate this. Like you said, Employees have tough decisions to make. Am I going to send my kid back into a school if I have that decision and, you know, risk them getting sick? Or am I going to keep them at home and all the challenges that come with that of me trying to keep my career, my job in order and, and take good care of my kids and school them at the same time, right? Like, I have a lot of friends that are professionals and they both are getting home in the evening and the schooling starts then because the people that are caring for them during the day aren't doing the schooling either.
Well, that's kind of what I think a lot of employers are like, well, we're working remotely, that solves the whole issue. Well, they're not as much considering, yes, my employees are working from home, that's watching the kid, but the kid has, you know, not having a teacher there, they are busy with their children, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 kids, however many they have. The remote work scenario isn't enough for some parents. They just, maybe their spouse is at work. They don't have any help. They don't have anyone that can come help. So it turns into this whole, what more do employers need to do than just saying, you can work from home, that's fine, and still expect the same amount of productivity from 9 to 5 every day when school is from 9 to 3. So, you know, therein lies where I think it's important to get feedback from your employees, understand what their situation is, talk to them, understand, you know, the afternoons are going to be so much better, my husband can come home or my wife can come home and see the individuals. And if it's, you know, we're talking small businesses that are about 50 employees or less, and seeing how many people fall into different portions and how you can specifically adhere your policies to them to make their work as productive as possible.
Yeah, it's fantastic. And so we've got this big challenge for employers. What do we do to create a great quality of life for our team to make sure that they can have some balance in their life during these just bizarre times? We also are concerned about the productivity level of our teammates. We want to make sure that we're getting the most out of our investment in our human capital, all while being human at the same time. It's a, it's a delicate line to walk. And you've hit the nail right on the head for the first step. And like you said, most organizations, there are very few people inside the organization that more than 10 people report to them. Even if you have, you know, 500 employees, 5,000 employees, you know, we have this, these sort of pockets of managerial oversight. What we want to do is first have those conversations and determine, hey, who is impacted by this? How are they going to handle it at home? Have they made any decisions, if they have decisions? If you're in a state, like you mentioned, where there is no decision to make, then cool, we can at least move past that and just start saying, okay, who does this impact? Do you have a game plan? How can we help facilitate said game plan? So as an employer, there's a couple of things we can do to help facilitate the game plan. And that's, first of all, we need to continue to be more flexible with the work from home and work remote thing. And so that's going to require not only making sure— so some of us, you know, at ERG, we kind of invested in making sure everybody's got the technology and the things they need to work from in their house. But I know people have kind of dragged their feet on this, said, hey, it's a temporary thing. It's going on temporary for however many months now though. So you probably ought to have revisited that at some point. But it's not only making the investments of what does it take for somebody to be able to work from home, but also what policies do we need in place to make sure that we're creating clear expectations as far as when you are working from home. But then that brings up some other things. Like we can get a little bit more flexible with how we structure and schedule our workdays and our workweeks. I mean, what do you think about that as somebody that works from home yourself? How do you structure your workday to be most productive?
So I am one of the few, and I'm very lucky for where I work in the ERG companies, that I have a flexible schedule as long as everything's handled. And I don't have as much of a set time as much as making sure, you know, if there's meetings set, if there's client expectations, they're all met. So I do think that businesses who aren't as who, well, I should say who are able to make a little bit more adjustable hours. So parents who can work from 5 or 6 AM until school starts, they can get a lot of the work done that's behind the scenes if it's client-facing or, you know, whatever the industry that you may be working in. But if they're able, if it's not going to impact any kind of production and it, you know, they're still getting their work done, say you can work before or after hours. Now this has to be a call up to management and it all depends on the industry, like I said, but giving them a little bit more where the kids are sleeping or the kids are done school and they're occupied, they can focus more. It's not only going to benefit their work productivity, but it's going to benefit your company because you're going to get the better work out of it. They're not constantly distracted. So I do think if you're able to, that would be the number one, you know, Talk to them and see if, you know, what times work best for them and if it works in. Now this may be if there's meetings that need to be scheduled, they work around that. And that's obviously something that comes with, you know, that's your responsibility to join the meeting, but trying to work around them with that. Also maybe doing longer days. Some days they may have coverage 2 days a week and they're like, well, I can work 10-hour days these days. But I don't have coverage this day, so I'm going to be more focused on the kids. So it all, like I said, it depends if this is able in your company and how you can work your company around your employees to better fit their schedule, because no one's schedule is going to be the same with school. They're going to have different options available. They're going to have different times that they're able to work more, work less, be less distracted, be more distracted. So working around that is that initial question, like you said, talk to them, ask them what their schedule is going to look like. What these next couple months are going to look like while kids are in school. Well, not in school. At home.
School virtually. It's interesting, as you were talking about that, I think about some of the top things that employees want when they're looking for a new job. They want education and training. They obviously— compensation and benefits, those things matter. But when you get past some of those, education and training, flexibility in how and when I work is one of the number one things that employees work for. It's kind of interesting, it took a situation like this to kind of force the hand of employers to create the flexibility to be able to do some of these things in a way that's unique. And, you know, it's really— could almost be mandatory at this point if this is talent that you want to keep on your team. And obviously that becomes a component of this, and certainly not the part that a lot of folks want to move towards, is, is it going to make sense for everybody to stay in the employment relationship? Obviously those are going to be real fringe cases when it doesn't. You want to do everything you can to meet the needs of the organization and the individual, assuming the job can get done. You touched on that earlier, right, of just making sure they can do it. And it's really challenging. I, I know I'm a parent, I've got 2 kids, I've tried to work at my desk with them over here doing things, and you're either going to be a lousy teammate or a lousy parent while you're doing that. And so you've got to find a way to, to make this work if you're going to be working from home. And it takes the employers giving some flexibility to make that happen.
And at the end, they always say, you know, something good comes from bad things. Yes, this is, you know, it's a struggle that a lot of us are facing with this COVID-19. It's impacting everything. But this can improve your company culture and your communications more than it's ever done in the past. So if you are willing to work with your employees, if you're showing that you're open, and you're talking through this, and you're you're worried about them, you care about what's the best schedule for them, how this is going to work, they're going to be more appreciative. They're going to love, you know, they're not going to come in as stressed every day because they don't feel that they couldn't talk to you or you didn't, you know, adjust anything for what they're going through. So they're coming in, they're stressed out, they're, you know, they're not getting as much work done, then it just, it's like a spiral down. When a little bit communication, a couple flexible hours here and there, understanding what they're going through makes them much happier, gets more work done, and it just creates, you know, my work is allowing me to do this, this is great. Like, they open up, they talk to me, I can tell my— no, Matt, you know, today my kid has to do this for school. I'm usually available during this time. I'm not available today during this time. I'm so sorry. Okay, that's no worries. You know, we have this meeting, but we can move it. Both works on our schedule. So just having that can improve your company as well and your employee experience.
Yeah, it's interesting. When we first talked about discussing this topic today, I was like, "Oof, that's a complicated topic, and I'm not sure if we're ready to dive right into it." But the more I've thought about it, it's actually really, really simple, and that's do exactly what we just said. Talk to your employees, find out who's impacted, Have a heart-to-heart conversation with them on what the plan is. Try to find out how you can help accommodate the plan. Then make sure your policies have been revised and reviewed to take into account everything that we're dealing with, the remote work and, you know, the expectations around it. And then finally, make the adjustments that if you need to, to any of your scheduling policies and workflows and how people are going to be allowed to work together. Obviously, we've all started to leverage technology. We've all started to do the things that it takes to be able to work remote. If we can allow people to work remote. And then, you know, if it's not somebody who can work remote, then it gets a little bit simpler because you just— they can either make it into the office or they cannot. But I still think that some of the core tenets of that, as far as the flexibility, are going to have to come into place. Now, one piece that I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, and that's that we have some, some leave policies that are in place as well. So not only your internal leave policies and how you're going to want to make sure that you're enforcing or adjusting those, but we have the leave policies from FFCRA, particularly as it relates to emergency paid FMLA. And so we interesting to see how that gets tweaked over time, uh, since those were based on schools being closed. And so now schools, some will have the option to stay open, and so we're going to see that change probably on a state-by-state basis, I would imagine, as we start to look at the application. But being a federal policy, that, that should create a whole lot of interesting circumstances. So I think it's very simple. I think as an employer, the whole time we've been talking about exercising communication and empathy, right? And understanding that we're all in this together and that the only way you're going to go through this is not with a Gestapo approach of, hey, you got to get your work done no matter what, this is the situation, this is what it is. It's understanding that, hey, if I were in their shoes, what would I need to be in a position to succeed right now? And anything else to add on that?
It's not just going to better them, it's going to better you as an employer. I think we've hit on everything. Like you said, as always, there's tons of, you know, moving parts to this whole COVID-19, and, you know, as soon as we get any updates, we will be passing along. But you can just do what you can do right now as an employer, you know, communicate. And then once there's more federal guidelines out, then that's when you can start implementing, if you have to, those federal steps that are involved.
Yeah, make sure you go to ergpayroll.com. We've been getting so much great feedback about all the content that Karen and the and her team have been doing a fantastic job of pushing out every time there's one of those updates. We don't hit you with the what-ifs, we hit you with the things that apply to you as an employer. Make sure you subscribe on our website right at the top of the page and you'll get those updates as they happen in real time. Karen, always a delight to get to talk about these topics with you every Monday during our meeting. We appreciate the time.
Thanks. Bye, everybody.
