Three COVID-19 vaccines are currently being distributed and administered under federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorizations. As an employer, you may be considering whether you should require your employees to be vaccinated before they return to the workplace. You may also be concerned about your potential liability if an employee has a severe reaction to the vaccine, or if your unvaccinated employee infects others. You are right to be cautious about these risks and to ask questions about implementing a vaccination policy.

As more schools are starting to resume in-person instruction, we’d like to highlight the observance of Child Abuse Prevention Month, April 1-30, 2021. It’s a great time to take inventory of your abuse prevention risk management measures and remind your staff about appropriate boundaries with students as the kids return to the classroom. Litigation and damages against public schools due to sexual misconduct robs millions of dollars from instructional budgets.

Title IX Consultant Megan Ferrell raised these essential points about Title IX training in a recent webinar.

We are now a year into a new reality defined by the Coronavirus. We are sick and tired (and not just figuratively) of COVID-19 and the limitations on our activities and social life. The rollout of vaccines has provided some hope for a return to normal routines, but distribution will take time and relief won’t be instantaneous. We can expect the stress of this pandemic will continue for months to come.

A few weeks ago, we provided you with information for preventing abusive and criminal intrusion of online teleconferencing platforms. Such measures help to protect participants in virtual classrooms and online meetings from external threats. It’s just as important to have policies and protections in place to deter child abuse perpetrators from using your technology tools to cause harm to children and others.

If you have employees working from home – as more of us are doing while the pandemic continues to surge – it’s even more important to educate and assist remote workers with both cyber security and physical security. Here are some key points to emphasize with employees working from home to keep sensitive information and valuable equipment out of the wrong hands:

A return-to-work (RTW) program can be a valuable addition to your workers’ compensation program. An RTW policy allows your employees to return to a light-duty or modified job while they recover from an occupational injury or illness and is designed to help injured or sick employees get back to work in a safe and timely manner.

With the continuing spread of COVID-19, a new emergency temporary standard (ETS) protecting employees in most worksites was approved by Cal-OSHA recently. Schools were generally excluded from similar regulations previously. This new ETS extends an existing safety standard for medical and emergency responders to most workplaces, including schools.

As vaccines are at last being distributed, we are experiencing some of the worst outcomes of the pandemic as winter begins. Many regions are facing new restrictions in the attempt to prevent the spread of Coronavirus with businesses, government facilities and public schools returning to remote operations. Until large portions of the population are vaccinated and the rates of infection are reduced in our communities, a lengthy period of remote learning in our schools may be the reality for the near future.

In the course of the past several months, new workers’ compensation legislation and Cal/OSHA rules for workplace safety emergency standards were put forward. These new laws and regulations will impact how your school and employees will be affected due to potential exposure to COVID-19 in their work environment. These statutes and regulations are extensive, so we can’t go into detail in this short Trending Topics article. However, Keenan has produced more detailed information in our Briefings on Senate Bill 1159, Assembly Bill 685 and Cal/OSHA’s new Workplace Safety Standards.