Managing Employees’ Leave of Absence During the Coronavirus Pandemic

General Principles:

• Protect the vulnerable (older adults, those with underlying conditions resulting in immunocompromise, or pregnant) .
• Identify and remove newly infected persons.
• Keep employees and workplaces safe and sanitary.
• Have appropriate governance policies in place.

Recommended Planning:

• Inform and seek authorization for your plan from your organization’s leadership. Develop your plan in conjunction with occupational health and safety professionals, government regulations, and public health authorities.
• Sick employees (including those with minimal symptoms) should stay home.
• Eliminate all close contact with anyone with infectious symptoms [19]. If there is believed to be COVID-19’s SARS-CoV2 virus transmission in your area or someone has traveled to a region with potential infections, then anyone with even mild symptoms of a respiratory tract infection (e.g., cough, fever, fatigue) should stay home to be sure they do not progress to a clear, readily transmissible, and potentially severe COVID-19 infection [16].
• Stop all non-essential travel to any cities/countries with outbreaks or community spread in progress (see map to help with other risk considerations [20]). Companies should assess their risk tolerance regarding cessation of all non-essential travel; this is especially true for travel either to, or through, any country/region/city reporting cases.
• Train staff on how to properly disinfect workplaces and provide them with appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE). Appropriate PPE for cleaning an office contaminated by the virus is typically N95 or other device to sufficiently filter the virus.
• Clean commonly touched worksite surfaces frequently (e.g., hourly), including machine controls, door handles, bathroom doors, faucet handles, lunch tabletops, etc. Consider propping open bathroom and other doors to reduce handling. Avoid shared equipment when possible (e.g., keyboards), and clean common surfaces between shifts or between worker usage.
• Clean surfaces with an agent that kills viruses (e.g., 62-71% ethanol, 0.5% hydrogen peroxide, 0.1% sodium hypochlorite) for at least 1 minute [9]. It is important to allow sufficient time for sanitizing agents to work, and directions should be carefully followed.
• Encourage frequent handwashing [21].
• Educate and place posters throughout workplace to remind employees to not touch their eyes, nose, and/or mouth with unwashed hands (e.g., CDC poster).
• Teach workers to use tissues to catch a cough or sneeze, then throw that tissue away and wash their hands.
• Avoid scheduled aggregate meetings and encourage physical distancing within group settings, ideally a distance of at least 6 feet [22]. Encourage use of teleconferences and/or other virtual meeting formats.
• Encourage early reporting of any symptoms consistent with COVID to the designated employer representative or supervisor.
• Have employees who develop symptoms stay away from the workplace until clinically evaluated and/or until the symptoms are resolved.
• Consider having employees who could be in the incubation stage work from home for at least 2 weeks after the possible exposure.
• In certain manpower shortage situations, medical centers and critical service workers are being allowed to work while asymptomatic with bid temp checks and self- surveillance for symptoms providing the consistently where mask instead of being quarantined for 14 days. RTW guidelines vary widely and are changing quickly. Some changes have been necessitated by considerations of assuring enough workers to perform critical functions. CDC advised on a March 17, 2020 teleconference that essential service workers (HCP, power plant worker, etc.) can be RTW after COVID-19 positive or presumed with follow stipulations:
  • At least 7 days out from onset symptoms
  • There has been 3 days without fever
  • Respiratory symptoms are improved (do not have to be resolved).
• Emphasis should be placed on mitigating workers being at work during peak viral shedding but then as soon as feasible safely cycling back to job
• Report any suspected case to the local health department.
• If there is a confirmed case in your workplace, attempt to maintain confidentiality and identify the most common contacts with that person and either: 1) have the close contacts work from home and/or 2) prevent the close contacts from entering the workplace.
• When antibody testing becomes available, assess the antibody status of critical and susceptible populations (under medical direction to ensure proper implementation, interpretation, and management). These populations include employees on oil drilling platforms, commercial maritime, cruise lines, airlines, and assembly lines with workforces working closely together.
• Provide proactive assistance to support mental health for the workforce.
• Identify and train workplace coordinators who will be responsible for implementing and monitoring the plan.

More details regarding business concerns are available from the CDC [23].

Footnotes:

11. Guan, W.-j., et al., Clinical characteristics of 2019 novel coronavirus infection in China. MedRxiv, 2020.
12. Michelen, M., N. Jones, and C. Stavropoulou. In patients of COVID-19, what are the symptoms and clinical features of mild and moderate cases? 2020; Available from: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/in-patients-of-covid-19-what-are-the-symptoms-and-clinicalfeatures-of-mild-and-moderate-case/.
13. Pan, L., et al., Clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients with digestive symptoms in Hubei, China: a descriptive, cross-sectional, multicenter study. Am J Gastroenterol, 2020. 20.
14.Rodriguez-Morales, A.J., et al., Clinical, laboratory and imaging features of COVID-19: Asystematic review and meta-analysis. Travel medicine and infectious disease, 2020: p. 101623.
15. Xu, X., et al., Imaging and clinical features of patients with 2019 novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, 2020: p. 1-6.
16.Wong, J.E., Y.S. Leo, and C.C. Tan, COVID-19 in Singapore—current experience: critical global issues that require attention and action. Jama, 2020.
17. Matthews, A. and N. McDermott. IT’S SPREADING First coronavirus case confirmed in London as woman diagnosed with deadly bug brings total in UK to nine. 2020; Available from: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/uknews/10950656/first-coronavirus-case-confirmed-inlondon-as-officials-worst-fears-come-true/.
18. Zhang, Y. The Epidemiological Characteristics of an Outbreak of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Diseases (COVID-19) — China, 2020. 2020; Available from: http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51.
19.CDC. How to Protect Yourself & Others. 2020; Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-gettingsick/prevention.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fprepare%2Fprevention.html.
20. University, J.H. Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) . 2020; Available from: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6.
21. Ferner, R. Hand Disinfectant and COVID-19. 2020; Available from: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/hand-disinfectant-and-covid-19/.
22. Mahtani, K., C. Heneghan, and J.K. Aronson. What is the evidence for social distancing during global pandemics? 2020; Available from: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/what-is-the-evidencefor-social-distancing-during-global-pandemics/.
23. CDC. Interim Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). 2020; Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/guidance-businessresponse.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fspecific-groups%2Fguidance-business-response.html.

If it is a confirmed case, the employee may be entitled to leave under a statutory or company leave program, such as short-term disability leave, for example.

We have not seen any company policy additions. However, we are seeing clients leverage existing plans and policies in different ways (e.g. allowing unpaid leave and personal leaves.)

We recommend foregoing paperwork or certification documents and more flexibility regarding eligibility requirements for the client’s paid leave programs. This decision at each employer’s discretion.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains a list of locations with confirmed cases throughout the world. We recommend following the CDC issued protocols.

If they are on the CDC watch list, they are under mandatory quarantine.

A physician’s clearance may be required for an employee to return to work; however, it will depend on the type of leave that they utilized. This will vary, depending on what your company authorized.

Per CDC guidelines, the quarantine period is 14 days, which would be an appropriate period of time to cover the employee if the client chooses to do so.

Per the CDC guidelines, if the family member lives in the same home, your employee cannot enter the workplace. They can, however, be permitted to work from home if that’s appropriate for their job function.

We have been deferring to our clients regarding the amount of flexibility they would like to extend to quarantined employees.

For employees returning from personal or work-related travel overseas or to other areas with high risk, the safest course of action is to self-quarantine and work from home for a minimum of 2 weeks and not have direct contact with other workers [11]. If that worker becomes ill, he or she should promptly call a healthcare provider before appearing in a clinic or hospital (e.g., to arrange which entrance to use, to be given an appropriate type of mask before entering the building). The person should also avoid all contact with other people and use a face covering or mask when going out of the home. Wearing a surgical-type mask when ill may help to reduce the spread of the virus from the wearer’s sneezes or coughs. It is also recommended that healthy individuals wear a face covering or mask when going out in the community, as there is evidence of COVID-19’s SARS-CoV2 virus spreading by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals. Any questions about potential COVID-19 infections should be directed to the local health department, which has the expertise and personnel to investigate outbreaks and perform contact tracings (provided they are not overwhelmed by the current epidemic). It is important to recognize that return-to-work recommendations for essential workers, especially healthcare workers, may need to be modified in the course of the epidemic for practical reasons in response to acute workforce shortages in key jobs and sectors.

This person should be treated as if he or she was infected, with a quarantine period of at least 2 weeks. Be sure that the local health department is involved. If the employee develops typical symptoms of COVID-19 infection, they should contact their primary physician or health department for testing.

Follow the same protocol as if the person was returning from an overseas country or area with a high risk of infection.

If the family member is not ill, the employee may not be entitled to any statutory or company leave programs.  However, your company could offer personal leave time to cover the quarantine period.  If the family member is subsequently diagnosed with the virus, your employee may be entitled to either a statutory or company
leave program.

Unless the employee is ill, they are likely not entitled to any statutory or company leave programs. However, your company may choose to offer personal leave time.

Unless the employee is ill, they are likely not entitled to any statutory leave, but they might be eligible for other company leave programs.

Follow your normal leave process.  If the absence is supported medically, then it may qualify as a serious health condition.  If it’s not a serious health condition, the option would be an alternate leave plan (company sponsored or statutory leave).

Since the leave time is unrelated to the child’s illness, your employee may not be entitled to statutory or company leave program.  However, your company may offer personal leave time to cover the time period of the child’s school closing.  Some of our clients are offering employees personal leaves in the event of school closures.

Yes, several states have provided update guidance or enhanced leave policies. On the right-hand side of this page, you’ll find a running list…we are adding new links frequently as we learn of new legislation.

We are following the progress of the relevant Federal legislation closely, and will provide guidance via this FAQ once a law passes.

In terms of leave eligibility, we’ve advised ReedGroup clients to manage claims as they normally would under their plans.  For example, if an employee does not meet the requirements for FMLA or STD, even if quarantined, they would not be entitled to leave under these programs.  However, the employer may consider providing that employee with PTO for the quarantined period or allow them to work from home if possible.  We are deferring to our clients’ directives as to how they would like these claims managed; large employers can have very different operational needs.

We are seeing various applied methods including paid leave for a certain period of time, the use of personal leave, and utilization of paid time off. One example: authorizing a paid, “excused” absence for 14 days.

Our primary recommendation: allow the employee to work from home where able.  In instances where the employee is unable to perform the functions of their job in a work from home environment, we recommend employers look to existing leave policies and procedures up to and including  leave as an accommodation. 

If an employee is asked not to report to work, and is unable to substantiate that they have a serious health condition, the employee should follow the normal expected path for leave of absence requests  in order to determine what, if any, applicable leave types they may be eligible for based on their situation. 

To date, we have not seen any increase in mental health claims related to Coronavirus.

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