Has Your Job Been Affected by Coronavirus?
With CNN's latest report stating that 108,000 people worldwide have been infected with the coronavirus and 3,800 have died, and with many major events canceled, we thought we'd ask the readers: Has your job been affected by coronavirus? Has your company encouraged or required employees to work from home? Do you have any business travel scheduled soon, and are you considering canceling? If you have optional conferences to attend, are you rethinking your travel plans?
In the work world at large, many large employers are asking (or requiring) employees to work remotely and/or restricting business trips, including Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. Numerous conferences and events have been canceled; USA Today has an updated list, and there is also a Google Doc floating around with various academic conference cancellations. If you're curious how the legal field has been affected, check out the news coverage from Above the Law: So far, their staff has reported on preventative steps the world's biggest firms have taken, a law school's decision to move all classes online, and more.
{related: do you shake hands when you're sick?}
I already work remotely, so nothing has changed for me, but I'll share a few experiences from friends and family:
- A friend of mine in Maryland traveled across the country last week for a large scientific conference to find that it had been canceled. The organizers made the decision only 36 hours before the first session was due to begin, meaning that many attendees got the news too late to stay home. Some speakers gave virtual presentations from their home states and countries, while those at the conference hotel organized their own events.
- A lawyer friend who works at a Big 4 accounting firm in Pennsylvania said that her company is requiring employees to cancel all non-client travel, whether domestic or international, unless absolutely necessary.
- When my engineer husband attended a local networking event last week (we live in upstate New York), he noticed that some attendees were bumping elbows rather than shaking hands. (The media has been reporting on alternatives to the handshake.)
Speaking of trying to avoid contracting or spreading the virus, here is the World Health Organization's advice:
- Clean your hands frequently, either with soap and water or a hand sanitizer. (Please do not try to make your own hand sanitizer out of vodka.)
- Keep a 3-foot distance between you and someone who's coughing or sneezing.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
- Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your bent elbow when you cough or sneeze (also called “the vampire sneeze).
- Stay home if you're sick. If you have a fever, cough, and difficulty breathing, go to the doctor.
- Stay informed on the latest developments about COVID-19.
What impact has coronavirus had on your work life so far? Have you been encouraged to work remotely, or has your office gone the other way, “reminding” employees they should use vacation days? Has your company limited business trips? How would your job be affected if you had to work from home (or work closely with a coworker who had to work from home)? How worried are you about COVID-19 in general, and what precautions are you taking?
Further Reading:
- Workplace vs. Coronavirus: ‘No One Has a Playbook for This' [NYT]
- Coronavirus and the Workplace: What if the Boss Says to Stay Home? [NYT]
- Your workplace has banned travel because of the coronavirus. Now what? [Washington Post]
- Coronavirus Travel Tips: To Fly Or Not To Fly? What Happens If You Cancel? [NPR]
- These 5 Tech Companies Are Providing Free Remote Working Tools During the Coronavirus Outbreak [Inc.]
Public domain photo via – This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #23312.
I work in supply chain so we have been impacted ever since the initial slow down out of China in December. Currently all international travel is cancelled and only essential domestic travel is authorized. I have a trip to SFO scheduled in early April for a settlement conference that is still on right now but I expect will be postponed.
The only change my office has made is that we have been told not to do any non-essential travel. When non-essential travel was banned in the past, they simply deemed all travel essential and so they could require us to go.
It’s been a total nightmare. I flew to a country last week on the instruction of clients for urgent meetings – which the clients then did not show up for as the situation deteriorated – and am now in a situation where I cannot return to my home country because I have been in an affected country (showing no symptoms; not in the area where the biggest outbreak was). The firm is trying to work out what to do with me but I feel quite stateless and I am sure there are more people in my position out there!
Oh my gosh, that sounds terrible! I hope you can get home soon. Is your firm helping you with a place to stay (not a lawyer/consultant so I don’t know how this usually works)?
If you get stuck for weeks, you might try renting an apartment rather than staying at a hotel, to reduce your contact with other travelers.
They are helping but of course usual red tape – hoping to get to a third country and “self isolate” for awhile- before being able to return home. It’s a big mess for sure! Definitely don’t want to be stuck in a hotel – not just to reduce contact with everyone else – but because eating room service every night would drive me mad!
This is awful. I spoke with the manageing partner, and you should insist on billing your cleint portal to portal for this outrage, plus all of your expenses you have and will incur b/c of this stupidity. They baled out and did NOT even tell you? FOOEY on them! That is why I passed up the big bucks of international litigation and negotiation. The furtherist I go is to Pennsylvania, DC and NJ, and all b/c some of my cleints are there and I argue pro hock vice. Hugs to you. I am sure you will be OK, but quarantineing in a dumpy country is hardly anything I want to do.
I work for a global F50 company that has been monitoring this very closely. Currently, international travel is prohibited, domestic travel is strongly advised against, and businesses that are capable of remote work have increased their use of WFH. In my department (legal), everyone is split up into two groups – one group works fully remote one week, and the other works fully remote the next.
My husband’s company, on the other hand, is doing nothing. He works for a global Fortune 500 company and has only been advised that they are monitoring the situation.
Isn’t that interesting – I am seeing the same thing, polar opposite approaches from different firms… although at least in Europe it’s only a matter of time in my view before everyone is shut down / working remotely…
Similar at my company. Guidance came out late compared to other firms, but what we got was pretty strict. They’ve appointed a team everyone needs to check in with after travel before being allowed back into the office.
I work for a rural hospital, and we literally cannot pay the premium on masks right now. STOP HOARDING MASKS EVERYONE.
I was so mad when my mom told me that she bought masks for her and my dad, when they live in a remote area and never travel, plus the masks don’t do anything anyway.
If they do anything, then why do you care?
Isn’t this obvious? Because they are used in contexts where they do matter? And one less box is available for those situations?
Because they DO do things for the right people in the right situations. When a surgical mask (the kind you see commonly work) is placed on a COVID19 patient, it changes the PPE protocol for the healthcare professional who is treating them, so they can wear fewer personal protective items which are very hard to come by at the moment. They do not keep a well person from getting ill, they help prevent sick people from spreading it through secretions and should be resreved so EMS and Hospitals can have enough to put on sick people.
Yup, this. They are not really practical for people who are currently healthy, unless those people are healthcare workers who are constantly at risk of exposure and of spreading it to others whose immune systems are weakened for other reasons. Let the hospitals use and distribute the masks.
They do something in hospitals because they prevent sick people from spreading germs. They don’t prevent healthy people (eg., the poster’s mom and dad) from getting sick.
And yet the US just gave China tons of medical equipment, including masks. Reading the WSJ’s article with a timeline/breakdown of how China allowed the virus to become epidemic through stupidity, totalitarian practices and head-in-the-sand made me really mad.
Sorry I read that as “how Trump allowed the virus to become epidemic through stupidity, totalitarian practices and head-in-the-sand made me really mad.”
I work on a college campus. Student travel abroad has been canceled for the remainder of the semester. There are travel bans for several countries. Other than that, it’s very hard to tell how this is going to affect us. It’s probably a good thing that spring break is next week.
I work for a university. So far, no changes except university-sponsored travel to a handful of countries is canceled. Next week is spring break and most people are traveling, many internationally (including two of my husband’s closest colleagues, bleh) so I expect we’ll see numerous cases on campus 1-2 weeks later. I expect once cases pop up here the university will pretty quickly switch to online classes, but, per previously announced policies, staff will still have to report to work, which really ticks me off. I’m young and generally healthy with a seemingly-normal immune system, but have underlying health conditions, so while I don’t think I’m super high risk I would really prefer not to get this if possible. I think I’ll talk to my doctor and try to get a note for full-time WFH once the university cancels classes. There’s literally no part of my job I can’t do from home, so it’s just stupid for me to have to go to the office and expose myself to people every day.
Unless your husband’s coworkers are traveling to China, Korea, or Italy, I wouldn’t assume they have any greater chance of catching it then any person traveling in the US or who lives in a US city. Other countries have a higher number of cases because they have more widespread testing, not because they necessarily have more cases.
Yeah I get that. I didn’t really mean international travel is especially problematic, just travel in general. People are just scattering very widely over spring break (including to places like NYC and Seattle) and I would be surprised if some of those people don’t come back sick.
Business as usual for us in my small city. But, we live in a hurricane prone area so many companies here have already lived through several evacuations and have some version of a remote work/disaster plan on the books. I’m fortunate to be able to work anywhere my laptop goes. My husband works remotely for a global 500 company in a sales type role. Travel to hot zone areas requires executive board approval, all other business travel is strongly discouraged but not banned (yet).
I work in pandemic preparedness and response (in a government-funded capacity) so…. yes. Trying not to burn out but feel like I”m already there.
Hang in there and thank you for what you do.
Thank you for all you are doing! Current political climate aside, I appreciate the hard work of those in civil and government jobs. You keep the wheels on and protect us. Thank you and hang in there!
I work in biotech in the Boston area, and our industry is at the center of the local outbreak. We are requiring all office-based (that is, not lab-based) employees to work from home, and business travel is not allowed.
those biogen executives! now we’re in a state of emergency :(
My kids’ nanny is 62. Am I supposed to tell her she does not have to come in to work? If she told me that she was not comfortable coming in, then I would deal with it. But am I supposed to proactively tell her to stay home? FWIW, I live in NYC and DH and I are employed in biglaw and finance. Nanny, DH and I all commute via public trans. Show of hands, anyone?
I wouldn’t worry about it unless she asks for it or tells you she’s concerned. 60 is technically the high-risk cutoff, but her age puts her just barely above that line and if she doesn’t have serious underlying health conditions, her risk is still pretty low. My mom is 68, very healthy and active and is currently at a conference in Florida she didn’t want to cancel. I’m slightly worried about her exposing my dad (who is older and has health conditions to it) but I’m not worried about her.
I had an appellate argument scheduled for this week that was cancelled by the circuit on Friday afternoon. Thankfully I was within my 48-hour window to cancel the hotel without a fee (I work for the state government and have to prepay for hotels then get reimbursed). The hours of prep went down the drain for now, which is slightly frustrating since there were certainly other assignments that were put on the back-burner. But I understand the court’s decision.
Travel to Seattle has been canceled. We have clients housed at a detention center there and visits were suspended for a while, so it’s unclear when we’ll be able to see them. Everyone seems to be mildly panicking, but there’s no real plan.
I’m in Denver, and we’ve had three conferences canceled (that would take place next month) and all training across the country will now be virtual (we usually fly in dozens to a centralized facility, not even in a hotspot). All international travel will require executive approval, and most travel even from office-to-office is on an as-needed basis.
At first I was very uninterested in keeping a close eye on COVID 19 due to the hysteria and constant attention. I’m not in a high risk group, but my coworkers have toddlers. Obviously I’ll minimize risk for their sake.