Understanding the Coronavirus Stay-at-Home Order and How it Affects Your Business

Denver’s Mayor Hancock announced a stay-at-home (or shelter-in-place) order that goes into effect at 5 pm on Tuesday, March 24, and will remain in effect until April 10. As more states and regions across the country begin to enforce stay-at-home orders in response to the coronavirus health crisis, now is the time to understand what it means and how it affects your business and employees should additional counties and municipalities in Colorado adopt a similar mandate in the days to come.

What is stay-at-home?

Stay-at-home (or shelter-in-place) requires people to stay at home as much as possible and only go out for necessary activities, which can include going to essential jobs, shopping for groceries, going to doctor’s appointments, getting medical supplies or medication, getting supplies to work from home, or going for a walk, jog, or bike ride provided they follow social distancing practices of staying at least six feet away from other people.

Certain details of stay-at-home orders could vary from region to region or be updated as public officials and health experts get more information.

For updates to Denver’s order, go here.

What is important?

The measure is meant to reduce the impact of the coronavirus across communities and slow the rate of spread throughout the population. People who are found in violation of the order could be fined, but voluntary compliance and common-sense actions are the goals.

How does it impact businesses?

If you’re already asking your employees to work remotely and stay at home, a shelter-in-place order may not bring much additional disruption to their work, and you and your employees will likely continue to follow the safe practices you’ve already been encouraging them to do.

For businesses or positions that qualify as essential, a shelter-in-place order makes exceptions for leaving your home.

See the full list of essential businesses defined in the order here.

For non-essential businesses and positions, there are also a couple of exceptions to leaving your home. In Denver, non-essential businesses can remain open, as long as they are following social distancing practices, but only to perform minimal business operations, which include:

• Maintaining the value of inventory, ensuring security, and performing other basic and related functions
• Facilitating employees being able to continue to work remotely
• Facilitating employees being able to fulfill online product orders and process customer orders remotely

For more information about stay-at-home and to get additional work remote resources, download this handy guide.

At Obsidian HR, our team of experts is here to help. If you’d like to learn more about what you can do to keep your employees safe and your business running during this health crisis, don’t hesitate to contact us. You can email us at [email protected] or call us at (720) 456-3590.