My understanding is that this SBA has still not given guidance specific to this issue. The current guidance clearly says 8 weeks of payroll and that the 8 week clock starts from the day you get the funds, but doesn’t stipulate whether that is days worked during those 8 weeks or payrolls paid during those 8 weeks. Fingers crossed they will provide this guidance soon, but suspect we might still be weeks out.
We decided to cover our bases to the best of our ability and split our first payroll into two checks and will do the same on the back end as our funds arrived midweek of our second week of the payroll. Our accountants agreed that we shouldn’t split more than that as we have salaried employees. On the back end, we have already discussed with our payroll company to pay the last week early so that it will be covered under the PPP and how to fit that into the timeline.
More specifically, our 8 weeks based on funding date runs from April 22 to June 16, but we are using payroll from April 19 to June 13 (paid June 16) for documentation of loan forgiveness/fund use.
Also, just a heads up if you use Paycor, we learned the hard way that they will combine your payroll reports if you do 2 pay runs with the same check date. We had to manually separate all of the information back out and it took a lot of time. I would recommend making one Thursday and one Friday or if that isn’t possible, run all of your reports before you submit your payroll and save those so they are still separate.
We have two nurses who left in mid-March due to underlying health issues putting them in a high-risk category, each provided a note from their health provider explaining that it is not safe for them to work in the office. One of them (let’s call her employee A) was helping with triage from home but we then stopped that work at the end of March because our triage calls declined substantially so we used employees here at the office. At that point, employee A started using her PTO time until 5/2 and then applied for UI on 5/4. Employee B used PTO time from the start until 4/5 at which point she applied for UI. We received out PPP loan on 4/24/20. My question is, given that we were provided with notes from their physicians will we be able to include them in the forgiven portion of the loan?
Additional question regarding staff vacations: We have a quarantine order in our state for those who have traveled outside the state. As of now, it is 14 days or on 7th day get tested and then quarantine until test results have come back, if negative than we can stop quarantining, if positive we follow CDC guidance. We are thinking that we would like to give every employee still working an additional week of vacation with the thought that they could still travel out of state for their vacation and then come back and use the additional week to quarantine without having to dip into their PTO. We haven’t introduced this to the staff yet because we are still thinking this through. Another manager asked what we do if they have multiple out of state vacations planned this year and we can’t spare them for multiple two week vacations. Of course we want to trust that everyone is going to do the right thing and be honest about where they are going and follow the current mandate but are there guidelines that we can give to them about being allowed one out of state vacation until further notice? If they use the extra week being given to them to quarantine and then go out of state again, can we make them use vacation time or do they get to decide which PTO they want to use (sick or vacation)? What if they don’t have enough time to get another week, can we deny the vacation? In our handbook we do state that vacations have to work for the practice. (We are a practice with 38 employees.)
The SBA’s forgiveness worksheet (which has been posted by Paulie here) says (emphasis mine)
Eligible payroll costs. Borrowers are generally eligible for forgiveness for the payroll costs paid and payroll costs incurred during the eight-week (56-day) Covered Period (or Alternative Payroll Covered Period) (“payroll costs”). Payroll costs are considered paid on the day that paychecks are distributed or the Borrower originates an ACH credit transaction. Payroll costs are considered incurred on the day that the employee’s pay is earned. Payroll costs incurred but not paid during the Borrower’s last pay period of the Covered Period (or Alternative Payroll Covered Period) are eligible for forgiveness if paid on or before the next regular payroll date.
So the eight weeks starts with wages incurred on the start of the Covered Period. You can take eight weeks-plus-the-next-payday to pay them.
It sounds like you let employee A go because your triage calls declined substantially. Employee A could have done that work from home, but you chose to use office-based employees instead. This sounds like you laid her off. It’s not clear what happened with employee B; she took a voluntary reduction in hours, then decided she wanted full time work and applied for UI?
I have an employee who has been out on maternity leave since January 27th (using disability and NYS paid family leave). She did not register her infant in daycare prior to the shut down and has still not enrolled her in daycare. Many daycares have been open in our area of NYS, since they were declared essential by the Govenor. She is now asking if she can use the FFCRA EFMLA since she has not enrolled her in daycare. Any thoughts?
We have a nurse employee who has been out since the beginning of April due to child care (she has only been able to work 1 day/week since April). We have been paying her the EFMLA but now that our volume has increased and we are needing her to work, can we tell her we need her back to work or else we will need to hire someone who can be here?
If you opted to give her EFMLA, then you made the decision that it would not be a hardship to have her out. Now, a month later, you are saying it’s a hardship. Are you, or aren’t you, going to permit EFMLA at your practice?
You can change your practice’s policy and saying “We’re claiming the health care exemption,” which would prohibit other employees from using leave. But you’ve already granted this employee up to 10 weeks of EFMLA. Telling her after 4-6 weeks “you need to come back or we’re giving your job away” violates the job restitution policy of EFMLA. From the DOL’s FAQ #43:
In most instances, you are entitled to be restored to the same or an equivalent position upon return from paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave. Thus, your employer is prohibited from firing, disciplining, or otherwise discriminating against you because you take paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave. Nor can your employer fire, discipline, or otherwise discriminate against you because you filed any type of complaint or proceeding relating to these Acts, or have or intend to testify in any such proceeding.
Agreed…I have other employees who have put their children in daycares that are open for essential workers. It doesn’t seem fair that others can continue without any pressure to look for daycare for their children. The DOL has also posted a Q&A in reference to summer school closure and employees cannot continue to receive EFMLA unless the care provided for their child during the summer (camp or other programs in which the employee’s child is enrolled) is closed for a COVID-19 reason.
Hi all -
It was brought up in my office that we may need to think about labor laws and safety of our staff and wearing masks during this time of Covid19. A dentist’s office in town (part of a larger owned group of dentist’s offices) is having staff sign something that says that they are wearing masks voluntarily and accepting the risks of illness voluntarily. Is this something that we should be looking at doing as well? What say all you intelligent people? I was under the impression that as health care providers that accepting risk of illness is a given. Does this need to be a separate issue from any other possible infection that could be contracted at work - say Influenza?
Thanks in advance!
Laura Hutchison, MD
Patterson and Tedford Pediatrics
The tricky part in all this is looking at what the states are requiring. California is very “pro-employee” and I suspect they have more things that favor the employees, etc. perhaps your state medical society, worker’s comp or Med-Mal company could provide you with some California l-specific guidance?
Looking forward to this winter, when both employees and their children will be getting sick more often, how do you recommend we handle paying for sick leave? Thus far during the pandemic, we have been covering all sick leave because we have had to keep employees home for any sick symptoms. We are testing them in order to bring them back sooner if they are negative rather than wait the 10 day post onset of symptoms guideline for + patients. That said, paying employees for an infinite amount of sick days is not sustainable for most practices. At baseline, we generally pay up to 2 sick days and then they either take it without pay or take a vacation day. I am wondering what others are doing and what the HR experts here are recommending for how to handle paying sick leave this winter? Thanks
Paid leave depends soooo much on your practice size and local customs.
We have never offered separate pools of sick and vacation leave; it all comes out of PTO. New employees get 10 days of PTO (to be used as sick, vacation, personal leave, doctor visits, mental health days, funeral leave, my dog is having a breakdown) and it scales up by number of years worked at our practice.
Once you’ve used up your PTO, unpaid leave is granted at the discretion of the practice: Yes to maternity leaves; no to Bahamanian cruises.
Offering unpaid leave while an employee has PTO remaining can be perilous. People want to take off for this sick period and not be paid, but then they want to “save” their vacation time. They end up being out much more en toto than other folks who work through minor illnesses, schedule appointments on regular days off, and are responsible with PTO.
We are looking into solutions for employees who show up to work with COVID symptoms (cough, congestion, overall not feeling well) and we ask them to leave work and not return until we receive a negative test. Since we are in our PPP loan time period, we have been advised that we are unable to pay the employees with the Employee Sick Leave pay until we are out from the PPP loan time frame. One instance, our newest MA showed up to work feeling ill (no fever), and we asked her to leave. She had not accrued enough PTO to cover this time off (2 days), and this time without pay was a struggle to her as a single mom. Have any of you had a similar experience where you’re under the PPP loan period, ask your employee to leave work based on their symptoms, and they don’t have PTO to cover their days off? If you have any solutions to this problem we’d appreciate it.
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We have an employee who started with us in November 2019 and has been working very reduced hours since March/April because she does not have child care. Her claim during the summer was the camps that her children usually attend are closed. She was hired to work 4 days/week. We have been paying her the EFMLA (even though technically we didn’t have to, our doctors wanted to). We also had several employees that had issues with child care for their children at the beginning of Covid but have since worked things out so that they can be at work. The issue is this particular employee has personnel issues that we have been addressing for some time now like not arriving for work on time and lack of competency in her skills (no where near where she needs to be for having worked with us for 8 months), all of which is documented (which may, in part be due to the fact that she works so very little). We have asked for her to provide us with the number of days she can work in advance (we try to schedule several weeks in advance) for scheduling purposes but she refuses to do this. She tells us a day or two in advance. We are at the point of wanting to let her go but I’m concerned that we can’t, without penalty, during the pandemic. Normally, we would have let an employee like this go. Any ideas or suggestions here?
