As this week progresses, we’ve witnessed numerous unprecedented occurrences.
Our team has seen a major uptick in inquiries specific to: “what do I do next?”
We wanted to address one of the most frequently asked questions we’ve been receiving: How should I pay my staff through all of this?
There are a few different answers to this question, and they all depend on the current state of your business.
You need to ask yourself and determine:
• How much in cash reserves are you willing to put towards maintaining payroll?
• What do you have sitting in the bank/on your balance sheet?
• How will layoffs impact team morale?
You have a variety of options to “fill the gap” with cash:
• Apply for a working capital line with the bank that you currently do business with. Typically, you can get $100K for each owner quite quickly.
• Alternatively, if you’re concerned about your liquidity or credit, and therefore ability to get a line of credit – the SBA has disaster relief loans available to small businesses. We recommend all practices that are concerned about cash-flow start this process ASAP. You can find more information here: SBA Disaster Loans
If you are closing for a period of time and adjustments in staffing are necessary, we recommend some of the following strategies:
(Please always check with an attorney regarding your state’s employment laws. If you need an attorney – reach out to our team and we will connect you to an appropriate contact)
• If you offer PTO, consider allowing staff to exhaust their PTO (paid time off) before exploring furloughs, layoffs or pay reductions. You may also want to consider allowing employees to borrow a set amount of PTO (less than 40 hours at maximum would be our recommendation).
• After employees deplete all of their PTO, consider a % of salary to help them through this time without work.
• If your business is unable to receive disaster funding or a working capital line necessary to weather this storm, you may need to furlough or lay-off certain team members. Express to these team members that their roles will be available to them when we all get through this. It’s essential to sometimes make adjustments in order to keep your business going.
Remember, these recommendations should be applied to roles based on the duties of the job. This may be an excellent time to keep your Practice Manager focused on strategic activities to “get the house in order.” You may want to re-establish important Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) or research new tools/resources and training programs. If you are looking to sharpen up your protocols, please reach out, we have hundreds of pages of manuals/forms that we are happy to provide excerpts of to you at no cost during this time.
It is our intention to continue to address your FAQs and concerns. We’re here to help, as we get through all of this together.
Please, do not hesitate to reach out to our team during this time for guidance or advice. You can fill out a form, or email info@acarapartners.com.
