On Sunday March 22, 2020, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins issued an order requiring Dallas County residents to “shelter in place” effective at midnight Monday March 23rd. This order runs through Friday April 3, 2020.
With this order comes many questions concerning what restrictions apply to whom.
We highly encourage all of our clients operating within Dallas County to review and familiarize yourselves with the shelter in place order issued for Dallas County. In doing so, you will need to first make a determination if your business can be considered to be an essential business. If not, then you will need to advise your workforce accordingly. In the event that your company needs to suspend operations and layoff all or a part of your workforce, those employees will be eligible to receive unemployment benefits. Furthermore, once the federal government finalizes their Coronavirus Relief Package, eligible workers will be receiving some form of financial aid. At the time this letter is being drafted, the federal relief package has not yet been passed. Of course, we will greatly appreciate you communicating with us regarding your plans to either continue or suspend operations.
You can access information concerning the Dallas County shelter in place order by visiting numerous news media outlets including www.nbcdfw.com.
The LL Roberts Group (LLRG) has consulted with our advisors and as a result, will operate as an Essential Business. This determination is based in great part on the fact that LLRG is responsible for serving the general employee administration, governmental compliance, workers’ compensation coverage and claims processing, payroll and employment tax management for numerous industries and company types deemed to be essential businesses by the order issued by Judge Jenkins. As a result, LLRG will continue to operate during the period of time that this order is effective. Therefore, LLRG will continue to serve the various employee administration needs of our clients and their work forces whether they are based in Dallas County or not. In fact, LLRG serves a variety of industry types across the nation and will continue to do so.
Please be advised that due to LLRG’s various technological resources and cloud based processes, we have assigned several of our staff members to work from home during the shelter in place order. In conjunction with assigning some of LLRG’s staff members to perform their job functions from home, we are taking steps to continue good communication with our clients, vendors and affiliates. Subsequently, we will be forwarding incoming calls to our work from home staff members to their cell phones. All LLRG staff members will have access to their emails and operational resources. Therefore, please continue to communicate with our staff as you would under normal circumstances.
On behalf of everyone at LLRG, we are honored to serve the various employee administration needs of our clients and their employees. We stand by our local, state and federal governmental leaders as we all strive to win this battle against the COVID-19 outbreak. LLRG is committed to assisting all of those that we serve to succeed during the unusual circumstances confronting us all. We fully expect to see and serve all of our clients on the other side of this challenge.
While it may not be business as usual for our clients, we’re here to assist you in any way that we can. So please contact us with any questions that you might have.