Dashboard: How Will the Vaccine Mandate Affect Smaller Businesses?

[Music] welcome to the first episode of the 21 hats dashboard podcast every Monday Gene marks and I will have a quick conversation about the issues we think business owners should be monitoring this week Jean is founder and CEO of the marks group a consulting firm that advises small businesses especially about their technology needs he also writes frequently for lots of Publications about the issues business owners confront articles that are informed by his own experiences as well as those of his clients welcome Jean Lauren I am so happy to be here great to talk with you great to talk with you so good to be doing this instead of our old days on serious you know remember those days it's been a while I'm really delighted to be uh talking to you in this capacity again yes we have no network sensors or anybody like we're holding us back you know we just speak freely we can screw it up ourselves we're to screw it up let's start this week with the vaccine mandate mandate that President Biden just announced it um it applies to businesses with a 100 more employees but do you think it'll have an impact on smaller businesses yeah I do I mean first of all let's be clear that you know even businesses with more than 100 employees are small businesses so I want to be you I want to be clear about that there is there there's some negatives there's some big negative stuff about this but there's also um a few positive things as well which hopefully we'll get to later on the conversation but from the negative sideline I mean when when the President issued this you know announcement um you know I got a handful of calls from clients like that evening um wanting to talk about it and frankly people are pretty freaking out I mean why what's the biggest concern well first of all let's just let's just make clear on what the what the rules are okay the president said listen uh I have I'm telling OSHA to um issue new rules they're going to be forthcoming and if you have more than a 100 employees um you are not only going to be uh either required to uh show proof of vaccination of your employees or um make them get tested every week every week to make sure that they're not you know covid positive um so you know here I have these clients that have around 100 employees or more than 100 employees and they're uh they're they're they're kind of pulling out their hair right now Lauren I mean they're saying to themselves like I mean okay we're waiting for the rules but how do you define an employee right is it part-time full-time is it hours calculation like they did before how do you you know do they get tested what if an employee can't get tested for whatever reason am I breaking any privacy rules um are my employees what if what if an employee says I refuse to get vaccinated I refuse to get tested does that mean that we have to get you know we got to fire that employee I mean one client called me the other night he's got like 35 employees in his Warehouse many of them are like you know Latino uh they they come from the same Community the community there not big on getting vaccinated not big on sharing information with the government he's like I can't I can't get rid of these people it's like they're the base of my whole business so it's a big headache and uh I don't know if the rules whatever the rules that come out Lauren I mean I think they're going to create more questions than answer you know well the um you rais a really good point about how exactly you define an employee uh and I think that will be of big interest to to lots of businesses but one would hope that the real rules on that will be clear and that that will sort itself out pretty quickly you mean as clear as like the paycheck Protection Program and all the other government I mean what what what could go wrong of course I'd like to think that that will be said but you're you're right let me let me interrupt you let me inter one the how about seasonal businesses right I mean well I've got 150 employees in the summer but you know none in the fall and you know do I qualify for that you know anyway it seems like those are issues that can be dealt with and and let's until we see the rules let's put that aside for the moment it is a bureaucratic issue for sure uh but the the one big thing that you rais is the the testing thing I mean that that seems like the fall back it if if people don't want to get vaccinated the option of testing everybody on a weekly basis seems Seems doable to me uh what's the concern there well the concern is this so uh you know you're running a business you've got1 employees now you've got to have your office manager or your HR manager go around to every single one of those employees find out if they're vaccinated get proof of vaccination then ask them if they haven't gotten vaccinated you have to do that once you don't have to do that every week you have and then you say okay uh so now I've got a certain number of employees that are not vaccinated so they've got to get testing where are they going to go for testing um when are they going to bring the testing stuff in how of you know you know is there I think the at home version of the tests qualifies so you know there's a question of who pays for it that's exactly was my next thing so now these employees have to go out and and buy y tests every week or go and pay to get testing or does the employer have to pay to get the testing as well and again what if an employee you know doesn't do it for a week or doesn't show up for you know just misses it or refuses to do it and you know it it puts people into the enforcement aspect of it yeah into like an unfortunate yeah enforcement aspect that's exactly right so it's just it's just headaches headaches headaches that employers have to be dealing with and don't get me wrong nobody everybody gets it about vaccinations and you know it's important well not everybody that's a good point but I mean most of my clients I talk to they get it but it's just it's just another thing on top of them that they have to do um that is just going to you know create a lot of headaches for them and they're like I said and plus again they're still waiting for the rules on this and and who's going to enforce it the enforcement thing seems like a really legitimate issue to me I mean the the whole with the mask thing you know the idea that business owners or or people who work for business owners and a restaurant or somewhere have to take it upon themselves to enforce a rule like that that you know that's no nobody goes into business to you could take listen you could take the point of view Lauren it's like listen this is like a once in every hundred of year thing it is a freaking pandemic guys you know like everybody's got to pitch in and do their thing you know if this were if if this were World War II the government would come in and tell you to stop making widgets and make you know tanks and we tried it the other way and it's clearly not working I mean the the economy is not where we thought it was going to be and I think it makes sense to take take action now rather than to wait and see it get worse as we head into the fall and winter right that's exactly right it's just you know again I think the biggest issue though that employers have is um you know it's just you know what happens if employees don't do it um you know the questions that they have to ask also are they they're they go against what we've been told for years I mean if if I interview somebody for a job I'm not allowed to ask about their health history or whether or not they smoke or if they drink heavily on the weekends what that has nothing to do with the performance of their job now something I have to ask them about whether they're vaccinated or not it's it's not consistent and it it opens you up to potential liabilities you know on top of that OSHA in it since its existence it's there to have a safe workplace so their rules are to make sure that listen there should be no puddles on the ground and you know the electrical system should be up to speed and you know you wiring and and sprinklers but you know OSHA has never been like No And by the way now we're going to have rules about how your employees need need to act in their personal lives to to be part of a safe workplace that's like new stuff and whenever there's new stuff there's going to be arguments and debates and therefore lawsuits and employers are going to be in the middle of all this and it's tough there will definitely be lawsuits all right well fortunately the goal of this podcast is to discuss the important issues not to solve them so uh let's move on to our next issue and that is the uh the recent expansion uh of access and and uh the increase in the cap of the economic injury disaster Loan program of the SBA um do you think that uh that expansion and that access of the access and of the cap is going to make a difference for well I saw in your 21 hats newsletter today that you know there there was people some people have the opinion that it's like you're G to have more chance of winning the lottery than getting that money um that may or may not be true but listen if if if well it is true that they're opening the window just for the smaller loans initially I think for about a month right so and there will be a limit to how much money they have to give out so that was the point of the lottery and it's also true the that the program right now is set to expire at the end of the year which is quickly coming up so that's going to have to be extended as well to you know to get all the money out there but let's put all that aside let's assume the government actually works uh and uh the rules and again this is this is a good part of what the president said in his you know in in his steps to fight Co is to provide more capital for small businesses now the economic injury disaster loans uh are are loans that really any business can get as long as they've been impacted by covid the rules are fairly gray about what how you define being impacted um you traditionally it's been you have to be in a disaster area declared by the government and the entire country is a disaster area still because of the pandemic so assuming that you're eligible for a loan now you can now get up to $2 million of a loan loan which is it was been expanded that's good but let me tell you what's really good they changed the rules you can now use the proceeds of that loan to pay down other debt so just think of it Lauren like say you've got other debt um and maybe the interest rate is higher this this loan is a 3.75% interest rate for 30 years fixed so if you have you know other debt that's around that amount you probably don't have a 30 your fixed loan at that amount if you've got working capital and Equipment loans out there now you've got the ability to to get this economic injury disaster loan pay off those other loans fix your rate at 3.75% which is close to Market rates now and let me tell you those rates are going to be going up in the future you know seeing how inflation is going I think it's a huge bonus for a lot of business owners I've been telling my clients jump on this now um refinance your debt fix it for 30 years take advantage of these eids it's a real plus I think the key point there is the jump on it now uh advice you got to get going now because uh people are worried that the money is going to run out and uh as a lot of people as you know in the restaurant industry found if you don't get in line early uh you're too late to the game so jump on it now you mentioned inflation uh I know from previous conversations um I'm sorry I moved to the wrong question let me back up a second it's okay let's talk about inflation I talk to business owners a lot and my sense is that they tend to worry about inflation even when there's nothing to worry about but right now there's something to worry about uh you wrote recently about strategies that business can use to mitigate against inflation can you give us one or two good ones yeah actually I I want to first of all say that this is a piece I wrote for the Philly inquire I mean I right there every your week and this one has been like top of mine and and for a lot of business owners I mean Lauren you know if you if you really want to know what's going on with inflation you ignore what the media is telling you about the inflation rate sorry but you the inflation rate the Consumer Price Index is like 5% or whatever you go to the you go to the St Louis Federal Reserve site they have a a database called Fred and you can I forget what that stands for but it you you can you can search on it for PPI producer price index and you can get producer price indexes of all sorts of core things that make up the the economy and just to give you an example Lauren all right like the producer price index the inflation rate for Plastics and resins which are in pretty much everything right has gone up 46% in this past year and packaging film have gone up 30% in this past year Iron and steel prices are up 90% in this past year plywood is up 12% and chemicals are up 45% now I have just named like four or five key ingredients in just about everything that's made or produced in this country and they've all gone up way more than the 5.4% Consumer Price Index and but isn't the key issue determining whether that's a a long-term situation or something short-term caused by the pandemic and the supply chain issues that is likely to uh to Abate great question to ask six months ago when it seemed like it was short term and yet it continues and continues and continues and obviously we're reading about all the all the supply chain issues that continue on with all the ships backed up off the west coast and the price of containers going up now 500% uh you know it is this is a problem that's going to linger for another 6 to 12 months so yeah it's a long-term issue and you know when you look at those prices and where they are I don't see how overall General prices of stuff are are going to remain at five to 5% range when we've got these kinds of increases going on wages themselves by the way have only gone up about 4% there's no way that people are going to be able to keep up with those kinds of core material increases so what can a business owner do well there's a few different things first of all obviously you have got to be super flexible with your pricing you've got to be communicating with your customers we all know that um you have to be able to be to to raise your prices that's number one and obviously have good communication with your suppliers and all that we we realize that here's the biggest bit you know the biggest piece of advice that I have for our clients buy um you know don't GameStop don't buy cryptocurrency you know that's not what you know it's not what you do buy the core materials for your business now Warehouse it if you have to because inflation is going to continue to be pervasive for the next 6 to 12 months and every every smart client I know right now they're they're snapping up materials where they can because they know the price increase are coming on the way so they're doing that now you might be like hey we don't really have enough Capital uh to buy we we need some help well there's those economic injury as loans that we just talked about and also you know the uh the SBA has got great programs the uh you know section 7A and 504 microloan programs you can borrow up to $5 million from them at Market rates guaranteed by the government so the banks are willing to go out there that will help you buy inventory and working capital even equipment as well very very important and finally listen you know inflation it's a big cost of materials and labor so you have two choices you can either raise prices or you've got to reduce expenses elsewhere so the second thing that people are doing to reduce expenses is they are investing in technology and Lauren when when we talk about the in the weeks to come I want to give you just example of example of how small businesses are investing in Technologies Robotics and Manufacturing Technologies that are frankly replacing workers and that's what they're doing to control their overhead in light of uh this inflationary period we are going to talk about that in weeks to come uh next item to day uh I know from previous conversations you've been paying attention to ransomware attacks for a long time do you think there would there you know and there's never been more than there are right now do you think there'd be fewer ransomware attacks if ransomware payments were illegal I don't know how that gets enforced um do I feel that they there will be fewer attacks because of it um there may be but already I'm hearing that you know ransomware makers themselves are um are coming up with devious new ways to take advantage of the people that they attack um listen it it's it's you know it you what's six of one half a dozen of the other you know you you get shut down because of a ransomware attack and then you're a business say you're a business owner so you either have to pay the people to get your your files unlocked so you can actually get back to business or if you do pay the people what you're going to go to jail or be subject to fines from the government it you know I I don't know what people will do um so I I can't really tell you if I think it's going to reduce you know you know the the the level of ransomware attacks all I can tell you Lauren is that um over the period that I've been alive those guys those hackers all those guys from Russia and Ukraine and all that they are way smarter than we are they'll figure out some other way to get their money are there ways to protect yourself um have you done anything with your company uh well first of all uh the the number way to protect yourself number one way uh that that people still don't get the message about this is to upgrade your freaking operating systems I mean if you're a Windows user or you're a Mac User or even if you're running Android you know Google Microsoft Apple they're you know they're pushing updates on you all the time and a lot of people hate to upgrade their Windows system and believe me given Microsoft's history I can I can I don't I understand where they're coming from but the best thing you can do is to keep your operating systems as current as possible because the ransomware ERS they're they're out there fishing for older you know operating systems that they can encroach because they're easy to get into and if you're running the most current operating systems of iOS or Windows Windows 10 or Windows 11 uh you know you it's not that they're infallible it's just that the hackers that are out there don't want to waste time dealing with you because there's too many other low fruit to pick where they can invade and and do their dirty work so keep your operating systems up to date and by the way that's a cost now because you've got a lot of people working from home and you've got a lot of people spread out which basically means you have to do something with an IT firm to ensure that they are providing some kind of a service where they're checking in on all your employees and making sure that they're running the most recent operating system so that's what we're telling our clients to do I mean there's other steps you can take Lauren but that's the number one thing you got to make sure you're doing this year last item of the day um my sense is that despite the last 18 months most business owners are really not coming around to loving having a remote Workforce I happen to know you've had one for years U you happy with it yes and no I mean I made the joke to you before that uh my company is I have 10 employees still uh we waiver between 10 and 12 and um so we're growing Lauren uh but we um you we I have people I have people that have worked for me for a decade that that I haven't even met you know I have one woman who works for me in Colorado Springs literally worked for me for 10 years i' never met her face to face that is not a good thing I mean micros just announced this week that they're going to put off bringing people back to work indefinitely um you know that's going to hurt their Innovation and their creativity that will have an impact that's exactly what I wanted to ask you about we ran an item recently in the morning report uh based on Research that suggests that um you know those chance encounters that people talk about at the water cooler where all that Innovation and creativity happens that that's real but only to a point the the research suggested uh as this article recounts it that it's important to meet to get to know each other but once you do a lot of that can happen over the Internet through Zoom or or something like that what do you think I think it's balance and I I could tell you this much up until covid first of all let me tell you this much uh let me tell you this Lauren the Millennials were right okay can we let's just agree on this all right I mean they were right I mean before covid the Millennials were were yelling and screaming as at our older guys we want to work from home we want to be more you know we want to be more mobile we want to be more independent and all of us older people were like oh shut up come into the office get to work you know it's whatever yeah then Co happens everybody gets sent home and everybody still gets their jobs done right the cloud is fine there's you know little security I me right it worked so once again the Millennials were right and and what when we come out of this what we've realized is that before Co you had these essential you know HR benefits everybody every business had to have health insurance they had to have you know retirement plans that was like the big two that people asked for now to add to that the third required benefit is there's got to be a work from home policy now not all your employees can do it but for those that can do it they're going to expect it so when you're going out there and you're looking to hire people man I mean you're going to be asked what is your work from home policy it is a it is a legit question to be asked and you have got to have a policy and what I've seen most of my clients and by the way the big companies like Google Microsoft they're keeping their employees home whatever I drive around Philly man like to my clients the corporate parking lots the industrial parks you know the parking lots they're filled people are coming in the office I mean I you know they're they're all out there working I see them I you I'm I'm in traffic with them every day but the smart clients I know though are are giving more leeway to their employees to take a day or two every week and they can work from home as long as they come into the office for three days a week it's a balance you know what I mean um that's you feel you've been able to maintain the you know creativity aspect of what you do with your remote Workforce not at all not at all no I mean I I think we we just lose a lot we're all working on our own Islands we've been using go to meeting for years and it's fine and all that but it's not um uh impromptu you know what I mean it's not spontaneous and um so we have our meetings to do our things but I just know Lauren that if like if we actually had an office and people came to the office cuz that's why I closed my office cuz nobody was coming in but if I had office where people are actually in the office you'd be talking about your clients you be talking about other things and stuff comes up like oh yeah yeah that could really work at at this client thanks for thanks for mentioning that we don't have any of that you know we we just have no culture in our company low overhead but also no culture last question there are employers using what's called tattle Weare software to monitor their remote employees any thoughts on that what a bunch of baloney can I use profanity on this website because feel go for it yeah it's a bunch of I I mean wait it's a bad idea or the software doesn't work or how is it no it's it's a bad idea I mean what do we what do these your employees are children or something I mean God I mean give them some respect right I mean I don't care what my employees are doing at home as long as they getting their work done so if they're doing it you know standing naked in front of their computer or they're doing it 3 in the morning or whatever I don't care so I'm not who's got the time to I did you do that with your kids with Facebook I mean I we tried that for like one day monitoring our kids in middle school on Facebook and we're my wife and I were like we've just lost three IQ points in one day monitoring our kids who's got the time so uh no I think it's I think it's a ridiculous thing to do and I don't recommend any employer monitoring their employees just you know give them their assignments give them their deliverables what expected of them and then let them do what they're being paid to try treat them like adults thank you Gene marks thank you Lauren that was fun we'll talk next week great to be with you you can learn more about Jean's business at marks group.net you can find Jean's writing at genan marks.com and let us know what you think of this new podcast you can shoot me an email at Lauren ln21 hats.com or simply by replying to your 21 hats Morning Report have a great week everyone