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Greetings!
Business as usual cannot always be assured. Unexpected events do occur; thankfully for most of us, these are most often of short duration and minor in impact. However, more severe events can and do occur unexpectedly which can have a devastating affect on your business and your employees.
Who expects or plans for an earthquake on the East Coast, severe flooding in Vermont, wild fires in Texas and Minnesota, let alone hurricanes and tornadoes shutting down your business for an extended period of time.
Most of us do not believe this will happen to us. We have not established a plan of action to deal with this contingency for any number of reasons ---- but we should.
Dave Slivinski has written our feature article this month and can work with you and your team to facilitate development of a practical "disaster contingency plan" which includes a human resources component. Hopefully, you will never need it, but if you do, it will prove invaluable. |
| It will never happen to us...
With the recent weather-related events on the East Coast, tornados in the South, and flooding in the Gulf States, organizations should be reviewing and updating their disaster or business continuity plans; or at a minimum, they should be beginning the process of constructing a plan. According to the Federal Emergency Disaster Agency, how quickly your company can get back to business after a business interruption such as a tornado, fire or flood often depends on emergency planning done today. Statistics show that up to 40% of small businesses do not reopen after a major disaster.
Continuity in business operations can be upset by a variety of crises, large or small. Some common threats include sickness, earthquake, fire, flood, cyber attack, sabotage (internal/external), hurricane or other major storm, utility outage, terrorism, theft or random failure of mission-critical systems in the organization.
Even though Business Continuity or Disaster Planning is an organization-wide planning initiative, human resources departments must play a major role in plan construction. A plan should consider the human impact as well as the impact to physical property and overall business continuity. The effectiveness of HR policies are one of the key elements of survivability during a significant interruption in operations.
Earlier this year, many southern states experienced devastating tornados which either completely wiped out some businesses or partially damaged others. Yet, some were not in the path of the storm but experienced a loss of electricity for an extended period. They all experienced a similar employee issue, what to do with employees that could not perform their regular jobs?
Know the "who", "what", "when", "where" and "how" to keep your company viable. Here are a few examples of questions that every employer should have the answers to:
- How do we communicate with employees?
- Do we have an emergency number for them to call? Perhaps a cell phone?
- Should they be listening to a designated radio or TV station for information?
- Are payroll records backed up on a server off-site so we can pay employees if forced to relocate to another building? (Personnel records should always be maintained in a locked, fire-safe cabinet that is structurally sound).
- How are we going to handle situations where the business is fine, but employees have been impacted dramatically by the disaster? The loss of homes, family members, power, transportation, etc., could affect employee attendance.
 These are only a few of the issues and topics that should be considered from a human resources perspective and are only a component of the overall plan. Additional steps in plan development include analysis, solution design, testing and acceptance, maintenance and review. Plan now for the "what ifs" of tomorrow to increase your organization's probability of survival.
How prepared is your organization to handle an interruption in operations? |
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IRS and DOL Team Up
A Memo of Understanding (MOU) has been signed by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor to work together to address the practice of misclassification of workers as independent contractors.
The MOU is the latest in a series of efforts to curb worker misclssification that date back to 1978, when Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 was enacted to provide employers with a safe harbor on worker classifications until Congress addressed the issue. While some legislation has been enacted since 1978 that addresses certain aspects of the worker classification issue, Congress has yet to address the issue in a comprehensive manner.
Labor commissioners and other agency leaders representing Illinois, Montana, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Utah, and Washington have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. |
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