While businesses are starting to reopen, what does that mean for business owners? Steps and precautions must be taken for the safety of customers as well as employees. Without healthy employees present at work, business operations cannot run efficiently.

Before implementing schedules for your employees, identify which employees are more vulnerable or have a vulnerable family member at home. Consider allowing them to work from home if possible or assigning them different job duties to minimize their contact with customers.

Here are some steps that can be taken to protect employees while at work:

Conduct daily health checks
Conduct a hazard assessment of the workplace
Encourage employees to wear cloth face coverings in the workplace, if appropriate
Implement policies and practices for social distancing in the workplace
Improve the building ventilation system
Implement flexible work schedules and sick leave
Educate employees about ways to protect themselves at work and home

For more information on actions you should take to help protect employees, please visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Taking care of our customers, employees and agents is a top priority for Safeco. We recognize the uncertainty and financial challenges many of our joint customers are facing as the nation bands together to slow the spread of the coronavirus. To help Safeco customers, we have taken the following actions:

Personal Auto Customer Relief Refund
Fewer drivers are on the road, which means fewer accidents. With this in mind, we are announcing our Personal Auto Customer Relief Refund, which will return approximately $250 million to our Liberty Mutual personal lines and Safeco auto customers. Here’s how it works:

• Personal auto insurance customers will receive a 15% refund of two months of their annual auto premium as of April 7, 2020, pending regulatory approval.
• The refunds will begin in April and will be issued either by check or in the manner the customer made their most recent payment.
• The payments will happen automatically. Customers do not need to call Safeco to receive the refund.

Safeco agent commissions WILL NOT be affected by this 15% customer refund. 

Payment flexibility options

• Late fee charges have been automatically stopped and cancellations due to non-payment have been temporarily paused for personal auto and home customers from March 23 through at least May 22, 2020.
• We continue to work with individual customers to extend payment dates if needed and provide personalized support.

 Delivery coverage expansion for auto policies

• All personal auto policies have been expanded to cover customers who use their personal vehicles to deliver food and medicine. Standard Safeco personal auto policies typically exclude such coverage.

This additional protection is in effect for all personal auto policies in all states for losses occurring from March 16 to May 22, 2020, and reported by July 1, 2020

Most of our clients and their employees are now working remotely and it is no surprise that doing so brings a host of new challenges and risks.  This advisory from Chubb offers excellent advise for your organization to manage and mitigate these risks.  More specifically, you should ensure that:

- local bandwidth and network connections can accommodate your data communication needs;
- hardware and software is up to date with appropriate security protocols in place;
- your team is aligned in regard to the importance of cyber security and being able to identify "red flags" as they surface;
- manage closely and monitor any security exceptions;
- connect only via secure networks;
- utilize and update consistently strong passwords;
- download and click from trusted resources only;
- closely manage and monitor the sharing of confidential information; and
- exercise extreme caution when responding to requests for personally identifiable information or passwords.

We are here to assist you during these trying times - please reach out to us for additional resources in protecting your remote workers and their data.