"Reopening Your Alabama Office: Employment Law Experts Offer Guidance on New Order."
In an article published by the Birmingham Business Journal, WWHGD partner Jonathan Head provides insight into the implications of Governor Kay Ivey’s “Safer At Home” order for Alabama businesses.
The new order – the first step in a multi-phase reopening of the state – allows resumption of elective health care procedures and retailers to reopen with social distancing measures in place, but businesses like restaurants, hair salons, entertainment venues and gyms, among others, are not yet allowed to reopen.
“Even before Gov. Ivey issued her revised ‘Safer At Home’ order (Tuesday), it seemed likely she’d act based on basic principles of risk management, recognizing its basic equation that risk equals the probability or likelihood of an event happening multiplied by the severity of that event,” Head explains. “Her order explicitly adopts the language of risk management and adopts an incremental risk-based approach based almost entirely on triaging risk events’ severity.”
Head notes that the new order imposes duties on employers to take “reasonable steps, where practicable as work duties permit, to protect their employees,” and advises area businesses is to exercise the same logic.
For the full article, click here.